Joining hands with Rythu Bazars, the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) is all set to bring vegetables closer at home in different parts of the city under the concept of Mana Kuragayalu .
Under the concept initiated by the Rythu Bazars of Agricultural Marketing Department, 30 mobile outlets using three-wheelers modified to store and also display vegetables are to be launched in the first phase. The Urban Community Development (UCD) wing of GHMC has started identifying beneficiaries for the project which would provide the vehicles at 50 per cent subsidy.
While the Marketing Department provides the subsidy to the identified unemployed beneficiaries, the civic body would help link the rest of the cost with bank loan. For the mobile outlets, the cost of modified three-wheelers has been put at around Rs.2.60 lakh and apart from subsidy and loan linkage, it has been decided to provide Rs.15,000 as seed amount to start the business.
Overall, the proposal looks at launching 100 mobile vegetable outlets in different localities in the city which have been identified through a market survey conducted already. According to GHMC officials, the pricing of the vegetables would be fixed and fed into billing mechanism to ensure that a beneficiary does not try to sell vegetables under Mana Kuragayalu at high rates.
Modified vehicles
The vehicles would be modified with levels of display for vegetables and be able to accommodate around 1,000 kg of vegetables, an official said.
“We have identified some beneficiaries, but they would be more suitable for pushcart offering. We will now issue notification and screen interested vendors for selling vegetables using three-wheelers,” said the GHMC official.
The Rythu Bazar/Marketing Department had come up with the ‘Mana Kuragayalu’ concept as part of the Vegetable Initiative for Urban Clusters being implemented by the Horticulture Department and NGOs.
