The new trade desk will track shipments, clarify responsibilities and offer payment assurance, with exporters potentially gaining access to finance after building a transaction record.
Indian fresh produce exporters often face a problem that has little to do with growing good fruit and vegetables and much to do with trust. A buyer may be lined up, but payment risk, limited working capital and poor visibility after dispatch can still make overseas sales feel too uncertain to scale. Agrify.AI is now trying to address that gap with a new India-UAE Trade Desk aimed at giving exporters more confidence from the first transaction, according to the company and FreshPlaza’s reporting.
Darpan Bendre, the company’s co-founder and chief executive, said the biggest barrier for many smaller and mid-sized exporters is not the quality of their produce but hesitation over whether they will be paid. The new desk is designed to provide payment assurance, track consignments and spell out responsibilities before goods leave port, with status updates on shipment quality and settlement shared with the parties involved. Bendre said the aim is to build what he called a trust layer for a trade route that already has short transit times, strong demand and long-standing commercial links.
Agrify.AI says it does not offer credit immediately. Instead, exporters are expected to build a transaction record on the platform first, after which they may become eligible for an export finance limit. That approach, the company argues, turns financing into a reward for proven trade rather than a starting point, which may be more practical for first-time or smaller sellers trying to establish themselves in a new market. The model is consistent with the broader services Agrify.AI describes on its own website, including quality checks, documentation, shipping and payments across the fruit trade.
The company is also positioning itself on the other side of the same corridor, targeting international fruit and dry-fruit suppliers that want access to India, the Gulf and parts of South-east Asia without building a full local operation. In that case, Agrify.AI says it can act as importer of record and manage customs through partner customs agents, cold-chain fulfilment, sales and distribution. Bendre pointed to India’s fast-growing quick-commerce channels, including Blinkit, Zepto, Amazon Now, Swiggy Instamart and Flipkart, alongside larger retail chains such as Reliance, Star Bazaar, Ratnadeep and Lulu Hypermarket, as routes that are becoming increasingly important for imported fresh produce.
The broader strategy reflects Agrify.AI’s ambition to be more than a matchmaking platform. The company describes itself as a global fruit-trade network with an artificial-intelligence layer, including a tool called Trade GPT that helps users source, negotiate and place orders in plain language. It also says it has operations in Mumbai and Dubai. For Bendre, the India-UAE desk is meant to be a template for other trade corridors, suggesting the company sees logistics, finance and market access as parts of the same problem rather than separate services.
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