Shathi ShebaA digital operating system for finance-ready, market-ready rural enterprises
Smallholder farmers and rural entrepreneurs are commercially invisible to lenders, buyers and input suppliers. Shathi Sheba turns fragmented farmer information into a verified, reusable enterprise profile.
Why Shathi Sheba
Three gaps that compound
Each gap makes the others worse. No finance means no quality inputs; no inputs means weak output; weak output means no buyer will commit.
Finance gap
Low formal credit access and heavy dependence on informal loans. Only about 15% of rural households reach a bank or MFI.
Market gap
Price loss and weak bargaining power from fragmented buyer access — up to 30% of achievable price.
Information gap
Limited access to advisory, climate alerts and business guidance — 10–15% of rural women reach extension services against 50%+ of men.
Product architecture
One app, four service rails
Farmer-facing app + field workflow + institutional dashboard + shared backend.
Fund
Finance applications, risk grades, readiness status, lender packs
Supply
Input catalogue, order aggregation, cooperative-level distribution
Grow
Advisory, climate alerts, development plans, quizzes
Sell
Product listing, buyer rates, B2B matching, settlement evidence
Rural Enterprise Passport & Trust Engine
KYC + production data + input behaviour + training history + behavioural assessment + sales and repayment evidence.
Each rail creates data that improves finance readiness, supply efficiency and market access.
Fund rail
Finance readiness, not just loan referral
The product converts applications into structured, verifiable decision-support packages for lenders and projects.
Profile
KYC, household, farm, business and cooperative link
Assess
Cash flow, existing debt, production capacity and behavioural indicators
Verify
Field and cooperative validation, documents and data-confidence checks
Recommend
Risk grade, readiness status, pathway and lender/project packet
The apply-for-funds journey
- 1Select purpose — general loan or project-linked
- 2Consent + KYC — NID, phone, location, documents
- 3Enterprise profile — farm, cattle, crops, assets
- 4Data capture — cash flow, debt, production, market
- 5mPowerU behavioural assessment
- 6Verify — cooperative and field-officer checks
- 7Score — risk grade, readiness, confidence
- 8Route — bank, MFI, project, advisory or decline
The process produces a decision-support pack. The lender remains the final approval authority.
Every application ends with a next step
Assess → explain → develop → reassess → connect. The system develops applicants instead of only rejecting them.
Bank Ready
Complete, verified and suitable for lender submission. Approval remains the lender's decision.
Conditional / Project Ready
Financeable with project safeguards, cooperative validation or a limited ticket size.
Development Required
Complete advisory tasks, documents, records or a quiz, then apply for reassessment.
Currently Ineligible
A hard stop or a major risk stands until it is corrected. The reason and the appeal route are shown.
Supply — buy from Shathi
A verified catalogue of feed, seed, fertiliser, medicine and tools at fixed, published prices. Orders aggregate at cooperative level so a delivery does not depend on the farmer travelling to a market — and every purchase becomes input-behaviour evidence on the profile.
Grow — advisory, climate and training
Free content for livestock, crop, business and financial literacy; project-specific SOP tasks; live weather and climate-smart advisories; and quizzes whose completion updates finance readiness. Development is recorded as evidence, not filed as a separate training activity.
Sell — list, price, settle
List cattle, crops or rural enterprise products and see the price broken down before committing: B2B market rate, minus platform fee, logistics, warehouse and vet care, equals the net farmer rate. Sales and settlement history then feed back into finance readiness.
In the app
What a farmer can do today
Not a roadmap. Every item below is in the build that is running in Natore now, in Bangla, on the phones people already own.
Join a partner project
Browse projects open in your upazila, see the term, the expected income and the bank behind it, and apply from the phone.
Buy inputs at a published price
Feed, seed and veterinary goods with the manufacturer, the distributor and the delivery area named on every listing.
See the price before you sell
List cattle or produce and the app shows the B2B rate, every deduction and the net price per kilogram before anything is agreed.
Follow it to payment
Six tracked steps from submission through field verification to settlement, with the assigned officer's number on screen.
Learn, and have it count
Livestock, crop and financial-literacy modules with quizzes; completion feeds the readiness score rather than sitting in a separate file.
Get the warning in time
Weather and climate-smart advisories for the district, plus a community feed and field officers you can call.
The Sell rail end to end — a published rate before the farmer commits, and six tracked steps to settlement.
Shathi Apa · AI farm assistant
The adviser in every farmer's pocket
Shathi Apa answers questions on crops, livestock, poultry, fish, farm weather, markets and money — by voice, text or photo — and reads every answer aloud. Apa means elder sister in Bangla: someone you can ask without embarrassment.
Ask in your own words
Speak or type a question in everyday Bangla — no menus, no forms. English works too.
Hear every answer
Answers are read aloud in a Bangla voice, so reading is never the barrier to good advice.
Show, don't describe
Send a photo of a leaf, an animal or a feed label and ask about it directly.
A cattle check from one photo
An estimate of weight, age and breed with a short health note — before a field officer confirms the weight on a scale.
Writes your sale listing
Add photos of the animal and Apa drafts the description — the farmer edits, approves and posts.
Talk it through, liveRolling out
A back-and-forth voice conversation for verified farmers, with a monthly allowance of minutes.
Every new farmer gets a set of free questions at registration. Once their profile is verified, Shathi Apa stays free — and while verification is pending, the app shows the name and number of their area's field officer.
Shathi Apa
Answers in Bangla · reads aloud
Voice question · 0:06
Can I spread fertiliser on the paddy today?
Better to wait. Rain is likely this afternoon and would wash it off. Spread it tomorrow morning, once the field has drained.
How heavy is this one?
An estimate from the photo — your field officer confirms the weight on a scale.
The rules she answers by
Taken from Shathi Apa's own instructions. An assistant that will say "I couldn't fetch that" is the only kind worth trusting with a price or a sick animal.
- 01
Never guesses a number
No price, weather, dose or date unless live data supplied it. If it could not fetch it, Apa says so plainly.
- 02
Never diagnoses with certainty
It names a likely cause and the next sensible step — and points to a vet or field officer when it matters.
- 03
Action first, reason second
What to do today comes first. When a question is unclear, it asks one question back instead of guessing.
- 04
Farming only
Crops, livestock, poultry, fish, farm weather, markets and money — and the app. Anything else is declined politely.
Operating model
Who does what
The product requires clear role separation between data collection, verification, scoring, approval and market operations.
Farmer / entrepreneur
Applies, submits data, completes training and uses services
Cooperative / field officer
Assists onboarding, verifies the profile and monitors activity
DigiGram platform
Maintains the workflow, score engine, dashboards and audit trail
EcoDev / mPowerU
Provides the behavioural assessment engine and model-output support
Bank / MFI / partner
Reviews the decision-support pack and makes the final credit decision
B2B buyer / supplier
Provides demand, input supply and transaction evidence
Shathi Sheba provides decision support; licensed lenders retain approval authority.
For partners
Work with Shathi Sheba
Banks & MFIs
Lower acquisition and verification cost, thin-file visibility, structured applications with reason codes, and post-disbursement performance data.
Start a conversationB2B buyers & suppliers
A verified supplier pipeline with production visibility, traceability to the producer, and a delivery performance record.
Start a conversationCooperatives & NGOs
Member onboarding, a validation workflow, service-centre operations and a portfolio dashboard for your own membership.
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MVP 2026 — join the pilot
We are selecting pilot cohorts of farmers, entrepreneurs and cooperatives now.