Cold Storage Solutions
To minimize the post-harvest losses and distress selling by farmers, Koel Fresh Pvt. Ltd. in collaboration with the Rourkela Municipality Corporation (RMC) has set up a 5 MT cold room at Veer Surendra Sai (VSS) Market, Chhend. The members of “Maa Tarini” Self-Help Group, Rourkela have been trained to operate this cold room by Koel Fresh.
Smart City Rourkela is one of the 15 winners in the world under the Bloomberg Global Mayors Challenge 2021 and is the only Indian city to make the honour. Under this challenge, RMC along with Koel Fresh being the technical partner has developed a sustainable model which augments the income of women and small-time vendors/traders of the city while promoting the use of technology. This is a 3-year-long project for which Bloomberg Philanthropies is providing a grant of USD 1 Million and technical assistance to install 6 more cold room/storage facilities in Rourkela.
Self-Help Group is the centre of operation and management of the entire business, it is important to provide capacity-building training to them.
Koel Fresh in collaboration with two Switzerland-based organizations – BASE and Empa, is working on implementing a Cooling-as-a-Service (CaaS) business model and piloting an open access, data science-driven mobile application: Your Virtual Cold Chain Assistant (Coldtivate), to enable smallholders to access data and sustainable cooling facilities, with a financing solution, easy to access pre and post-harvest expertise and market intelligence; made inclusive and accessible through an innovative servitisation business model.
Solar PV powered cold storage provides convenience to operate in off-grid locations. It is energy efficient and reduces operation expenditure (electrical expenses) by 80%.
