Think about online classifieds marketplace like OLX and Quikr, and their television advertisements immediately pop into your head. Advertisements urging you to sell your motorcycles, cars and furniture for reasonably higher prices and with reasonably less hassle.
These websites have grown considerably in the past few years, but there is one category on them - a rather unconventional one - that has seen a substantial growth without any promotion: Cattle. Yes, people from around the country are buying and selling cows on OLX and Quikr.
Some classifieds sites now have even introduced separate categories for animals. Although, the largest number of ads placed in this category, are for pets - dogs, cats, parrots, a rural economy beginning to get access to and recognise the fruits of digitisation is adopting the heretofore exclusive urban domain and rapidly making it its own.
The primary reason for such growth in the number of advertisements is the elimination of brokers and cattle markets, where farmers find it difficult, as well as expensive, to sell their cattle.
Other reason is the low logistical costs (as the buyer usually pays for transportation, and one does not have to travel to the market).
All these add up to making online space ideal for buying and selling cattle.
But although OLX alone flaunts close to 3,500 ads for cows, buffaloes, goats and sheep, the operators of the traditional markets are skeptical of the growing trend and access to computers and internet remains an issue in the rural parts of the country.
"There can be no substitute for traditional cattle markets and it would be unfortunate if they are replaced. Unless you interact with an animal, you cannot see how healthy it is and how it behaves.
Unless you experience all those things personally, it would not be prudent to buy cattle," says Binnu Tyagi, who organises cattle fairs at his property in Meerut's Parikshitgarh talking to INNLIVE.
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