Traceability App Protects Coffee in India

Acviss Technologies has developed a blockchain-based traceability application for the Coffee Board of India that gets around the issue of operating when there is no internet connection. The app is designed to protect coffee production from counterfeiting.

The Coffee Board of India has been working with marginalised tribal coffee growers to help them improve their farm productivity and quality. In the past few years, the demand for differentiated coffees with traceability features has been increasing across the world which can, in turn, help obtain a premium for the tribal coffee farmers.

Commenting on this, Vikas Jain, Founder of Acviss Technologies, said: ‘It has been a pleasure creating a solution for the Coffee Board of India. We’ve not only built something innovative, but we’ve also tried to make it accessible and helpful for the common man. The app we have created is very simple and does not require Wifi for farmers to scan.’ The blockchain-based traceability application is an anti-counterfeiting solution that helps to reorganise the unstructured supply chain, provides transparency in transactions, and protects farmers from fraud with the help of quality evaluation.

The app also helps farmers to generate stable income and protects them from unforeseen financial damage with the help of automated payments, insurance and financing. For the end users, this app also helps consumers by providing authenticated certifications, ensuring that the product they have purchased is safe for consumption.

Talking about this implementation, the officials of the Coffee Board of India said: ‘We have worked with Acviss to develop a blockchain solution that has been implemented in the southwestern state of Karnataka and we have been very satisfied with the output.’

Coffee has become an increasingly common target for food fraudsters, with low-quality ground coffee beans adulterated with filler ingredients such as corn, barley, brown sugar, or starch syrup. One of the main drivers has been a reduction in coffee bean output due to poor harvests for some key producers.

With this application, coffee procured by these tribal farmers can now be traced from the grower to the consumer. Coffee parameters like moisture, weight, type and outturn are captured at source farms and certification data is also available for each sample collected.

To build consumer confidence, the app also displays the farm locations and data about the farmer. It helps to simplify transactions between farmers and the end consumer with the help of digitisation, as every product packaged goes through an authentication signature. This digital signature cannot be tampered with and helps in easier transactions between the farmers, processing unit, warehouse, distributor, retail, and finally the consumer.