MISLEADING! Malicious Campaign against FishAndhra Brand & Funding decoded.

As soon as the FishAndhra Brand was launched, many malicious campaigns were also launched through social media to malign the credibility of the brand and scheme. The recent one even goes out to the extent of discarding the role of the State Government in the initiative and calls the initiative a fully sponsored scheme by the center. We have decoded the misconceptions through this article.

1. The Funding: Any budding entrepreneur willing to start a new venture in the field of Fish and Aqua products must connect themselves with this initiative of Fish Andhra. A total subsidy of 40% will be provided combinedly by State and the Central grants. For SC, ST, and Women entrepreneurs, the subsidy amount will be 60%. A standard procedure is set by Team Fish Andhra, which an entrepreneur or a group of entrepreneurs, can follow to get their hub or retail unit to start operation.

As a Centrally Sponsored Scheme that involves beneficiaries, the funding pattern is decided by the center as per the chart below.

2. The Value Chain: Fish Andhra Initiative aims at creating a well-structured fish value chain and market demand in AP where a large number of farmers/fishermen can avail a guaranteed market and remunerative price. The model is proposed to augment per capita domestic consumption of aqua products by ensuring easy access to quality live, fresh, frozen, fish, and aqua products along with marinated and processed products to the end consumers. A well-structured Hub & Spoke model has been developed to cater quality aqua products to households across AP.

Apart from the Hub, Retail Units and the Infrastructure on the ground, set up by the FishAndhra Mechanism, the State Fisheries department is also working on A Mobile Application and an Integrated IT platform that will connect all the hubs and spoke units, facilitating procurement & Sourcing, inventory management, fleet management, sales, accounting, analytics, dashboard, performance management, E-commerce, etc.

3. The Value Addition: Andhra Pradesh contributes 34.5% of the total production among all states. Despite having the highest production in the country, the per capita consumption in the State is comparatively low. The domestic consumption volume was found to be limited when compared to the export volume and trade volume to other states.

To overcome this challenge, the Fisheries Department of Andhra Pradesh has initiated a model fish supply value chain, under the brand name of Fish Andhra. The Central Sponsored Scheme Component only offers a part of the investment and state facilitates the rest of the components which includes the following:

a. The Finance Part
b. The infrastructure Value Chain
c. The Manpower & Training
d. Equipment training
f. Branding & Marketing
g. Software and Backend Support

4. The Business Proposition: The entire Fishandhra Branding and management is done through state Fisheries department, which is funded by the State Government.

Once the beneficiary is identified, all the handholding till the time of setup of the Hub/Retail unit is done by AP Government and after set up also the supply chain is supported by the state government to ensure the business thrives. The unit involves a component of the investor too through a loan, So, maligning the brand is equivalent to trying to destroy the dreams of a budding entrepreneur. It is very unfortunate to see this vicious campaign against the entrepreneurs and fishing community, who are interested in uplifting their business in a domestic market.

We reached out to the Commissioner of State Fisheries Department regarding the matter and he gave us more insight into the Brand of FishAndhra. His closing comments are below:

The FishAndhra Initiative is designed in the line of PMMSY guidelines and the funding that the state and center contributes for each beneficiary/entrepreneur is just in the matter of a part of the finances. Rest of the funding is a loan component that the state fisheries department has facilitated through banks. The state department is working tirelessly to make sure every entrepreneur who are investing their money, time, and effort in the fishandhra brand should get a good return. We give our 100% not just in ensuring the set up of the infrastructure but till the time a plate is served to the end consumer.

Sri K.Kannababu, Commissioner of State Fisheries Dpartment, Andhra Pradesh