Agribusiness franchising in India: experience and potential

Abstract

Agribusiness or agricultural franchising is quite new in India, though it is quite commonly used in other businesses like fast food, hotel and other service industries where service quality is crucial to maintain brand equity. There have been only a few experiments in this field in the recent past by some corporate agencies, both private and public. This paper locates the rationale for franchising in agribusiness from global literature and from the Indian smallholder agricultural context where other ways of reaching small farmers or linking them with markets have not worked. It then analyses a few cases of failure and success in franchising in agribusiness by corporate agencies and compares and contrasts them for inferring on better management of franchising and its wider applicability in the Indian agribusiness context.