Hillroot is a shelf, not a buyer. Your cooperative agrees a floor price before the season, the pack carries your group's name, and the money reaches your own account within 48 hours of despatch. Here is what it costs, what we do for it, and how to start.
Figures from the groups in this demonstration dataset. This is a demonstration build — the shelf, the orders and the settlement figures are sample data.
No joining fee, no shelf rent, no listing charge, no annual subscription. If nothing sells, you owe nothing.
A registered producer group, cooperative or self-help group federation pays nothing to be here. The photography, the description, the group's page and the batch records are ours to build and ours to pay for.
Charged on a completed sale only — never on a listing, never on a lot that does not sell. Eighteen per cent where you grade and pack finished retail units yourselves; twenty-two where we grade, pack, test and hold the stock at the Guwahati hub. Your band is written into the agreement before the first order, and it does not move mid-season.
What that leaves you: about sixty-nine per cent of the shelf price, against the twenty to thirty per cent a grower typically sees selling raw at the farm gate. That gap is the entire reason this platform exists.
Settlement reaches the group's own bank account within 48 hours of despatch. Not a sixty-day cycle, not when the buyer pays us, not at the end of the season. The proposed terms are the same for every group on the shelf.
| One pack | Retail order | Co-Op member order |
|---|
A worked example on one listing already on the shelf, at the top of the commission band. All figures include Goods and Services Tax. On a member order what Hillroot keeps is whatever is left after the discount — which is the design, not an accident.
Most of what stops a hill cooperative selling directly is not the crop. It is grading, testing, packaging, papers and freight. That is the part we take on.
We come to you and the meeting is held in whichever language the group speaks. The agreement is two pages, read aloud, and you keep a copy before anything is signed.
Product photography, description and the group's own page are written and built at no charge. You approve every line written about your group before it goes up.
One published standard per crop, so ninety growers can sell as a single lot instead of ninety small ones. Food-grade pouches, jars and cartons supplied at cost from the hub.
Help with the paperwork for organic certification through the Mission Organic Value Chain Development for the North Eastern Region, and with the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India licence.
Every lot goes to an independent laboratory for pesticide residue, heavy metals and the stated active content. The report is published on the product page with your group named on it.
Collection from the block, cold chain for fresh rhizome, and despatch from the Guwahati hub. You do not book couriers, chase transporters or hold the freight risk.
Certificate of origin, phytosanitary papers, specification sheets and commercial invoices prepared for buyers outside India, so an overseas order is not a fresh problem each time.
We help write and file applications to the programmes listed below. We do not hold the money and we take no share of a grant or subsidy that reaches your group.
Nothing is exclusive. You may keep selling at the mandi, to your usual trader, or through a state marketing corporation, and list here as well.
Send the form below, or ring us. We need the group's name, where you are, roughly how many families, and what you grow. Ten minutes.
We come to the village, not the district headquarters. We look at the plots, the drying yard and the store, and explain the commission and the floor price in front of the whole group.
We agree a grade standard for your crop, and if you want it we start the organic paperwork. Conversion takes three years — you sell as conventional in the meantime, at the same commission.
We illustrate the pack, write the description, build the group's page and send a proof. Nothing goes live until someone from the group has read every line of it.
A small first lot, so both sides learn the packing and the transport before the season's volume moves. Payment lands within 48 hours of despatch.
Hillroot buys from organisations rather than individuals, because a group can hold a grade standard, a licence and a bank account — and because the paperwork for a single farm eats the margin it was meant to protect.
A registered farmer producer organisation or producer company with a board, a bank account and audited accounts. The most straightforward group to onboard.
A single self-help group can list through its federation. One federation on this shelf is twelve groups that came together to buy a pulveriser none could afford alone.
Societies registered under a state cooperative act, including growers' societies and marketing societies already handling a crop for their members.
We do not onboard single farms. Tell us your block and district and we will point you at the nearest group already listing — or, if there is none, at the people who could start one.
A District Industries Centre, a horticulture office or a line department can nominate a cluster for onboarding. Any government relationship is proposed, never established — Hillroot is a private company and this is a demonstration build.
Hillroot supports applications; it does not replace any of these programmes, and being on this shelf is not a condition of any of them. No relationship with any of these programmes is established — this is a demonstration build, and every line below describes what we would help a group apply for.
Nothing here is binding, and there is no obligation after a field visit. If a question does not apply to you, leave it blank.