The Problem What We're Building The Crops Who We Are
◎ GI Traceability · Northeast India

The farmer who grows
your tea earns the least —
because no one can prove
it's theirs.

Across Northeast India, some of the world's most prized agricultural products — teas, spices, grains — carry Geographical Indication status. That status should mean a better price for the farmer who grows them.

It rarely does. Because the moment the produce leaves the farm, the story gets lost.

TraceGI is building the infrastructure to change that.

500+
GI-registered products in India, most with no digital traceability
~74%
of NE India's smallholder farmers have no smartphone or digital access
Billions
in annual revenue captured by middlemen selling counterfeit GI produce
The Problem

Origin is the premium.
And right now, it's unprovable.

A GI tag is supposed to be a guarantee — that this turmeric came from Lakadong, that this tea was grown in the Brahmaputra valley, that this chilli was grown and dried under specific conditions in Nagaland. It's a promise of place, and buyers pay for it.

But the supply chain between a small farmer and a buyer in Tokyo or London passes through half a dozen hands. At each step, paper records can be altered, batches can be blended, and origin claims can be quietly inflated or fabricated. The farmer at the start of that chain has no way to prove where the produce came from — because no system was ever designed to capture it at source.

Existing traceability tools assume a smartphone-carrying, digitally literate farmer who can navigate an app and enter data accurately. That describes almost no one growing GI crops in Northeast India today. So the supply chain remains opaque, the premium bleeds away, and the farmer — the one person the GI tag is meant to protect — sees none of the benefit.

5–15%
Price premium a farmer can command with verifiable GI proof — currently out of reach for most smallholders
0 apps
Existing traceability solutions require a smartphone. Most GI farmers in NE India don't have one.
EU & Japan
Key export markets now requiring verified provenance documentation that Indian GI supply chains cannot currently provide
What We're Building

Traceability that starts
where the produce does.

We're building hardware that captures a verified record at the point of harvest — so every batch of GI produce carries proof of origin that no one can alter, all the way to the end buyer.

👆
One tap at the farm gate
A purpose-built device any farmer can use — no screen, no app, no training required.
🔒
A record that can't be changed
Once registered, the batch record is permanently locked. No one upstream or downstream can alter it.
📱
Scannable by any buyer, anywhere
Every batch carries a QR label. Any phone camera reveals the full, verified origin chain.
📡
Built for where connectivity isn't
Designed for remote growing regions — records are captured offline and synced when connectivity allows.
⚡
Off-grid ready
Solar-compatible and low-power. If a farmer can reach it, it can run there.
🌱
Starting with four crops
Assam Tea, Lakadong Turmeric, Naga King Chilli, and Black Rice of Assam — GI crops with the most to gain from verified origin.
How It Works

From a tap in the field
to a scan at the shelf

The same produce. The same journey. Finally, a record that survives it.

1
Farmer taps & registers
One physical tap at the collection point. Identity, location, and batch details captured. Green light confirms. Done.
2
Record locked
Data syncs and is cryptographically secured. The record is now permanent — no one upstream or downstream can change it.
3
QR travels with the produce
The batch gets a QR label at the processing stage. It moves with the produce through packaging, logistics, and distribution.
4
Anyone can verify
Scan with any phone. See the farmer, the farm, the date, the chain of custody. No app, no account, no trust required — the data speaks.
Where We're Starting

Four crops with everything
to gain from being verified

Each of these is GI-protected. Each is widely counterfeited. Each has buyers who will pay more — if the origin can be proved.

Assam
Orthodox Tea
Assam's small tea gardens produce some of the most complex orthodox teas in the world. They sell at commodity prices — because no system links the cup to the garden it came from. Single-origin verification changes that equation entirely.
Meghalaya · Jaintia Hills
Lakadong Turmeric
The world's highest natural curcumin content — up to 7%, versus 2–3% in commercial varieties. The premium is significant. So is the fraud: ordinary turmeric routinely enters the supply chain labelled as Lakadong. Provenance here is everything.
Nagaland
Naga King Chilli (Bhut Jolokia)
Once the world's hottest chilli, still among the most sought-after by global buyers and processors. The GI tag is increasingly meaningful — and increasingly impersonated. Verified batches open APEDA-certified export channels that commodity chilli cannot access.
Assam
Black Rice
Heirloom black rice varieties from Assam carry deep cultural roots and growing international interest as a functional food. Without traceability to specific growers and growing regions, that interest can't translate into a price the farmer actually receives.
On the Ground

We've been in the field
before building anything

Understanding the problem meant meeting the farmers, the processors, and the people who've spent their lives working with these crops.

With Ms. Trinity Saioo at her processing unit, Jaintia Hills
Ms. Trinity Saioo — Padma Shri
Lakadong Turmeric cooperative, Jaintia Hills, Meghalaya
Tea tasting with Shri Rajen Baruah, Heritage Tea Co., Dibrugarh
Shri Rajen Baruah
Heritage Tea Co., Dibrugarh, Assam
With Shri Upendra Rabha, the Black Rice Man of Assam, Goalpara
Shri Upendra Rabha
"The Black Rice Man of Assam" · Goalpara, Assam
Who We Are

A team that knows the field
and the infrastructure behind it

We're five people — two from Northeast India, all with backgrounds in the systems that move and verify goods at scale.

C
Catherine Dohling
Agritech & Supply Chain
Ex-Google. Deep relationships with producer cooperatives and GI societies across Northeast India.
T
Trideep Rabha
Product & Technology
Ex-Google. Leads hardware development and platform architecture. From Assam.
S
Sandeep Das
Systems Architecture
Maersk · Fidelity · Philips. Built high-load ledger architectures for global trade.
N
Neelakshi Banerjee
Growth & Partnerships
Ex-Tesla · Deloitte · EY. Market expansion and institutional relationship building.
K
Kenneth Anto
Data & Governance
Ex-United Health · Armanino. Compliance, auditability, and data standards for regulated markets.
People We Work With

The people who've spent
their lives with these crops

Our pilots are built around people who are already doing the work — we're building the infrastructure to give that work its due credit.

Meghalaya · Turmeric
Ms. Trinity Saioo — Padma Shri Awardee
A leading advocate for Lakadong Turmeric and its indigenous growers in Jaintia Hills. Our Phase 1 pilot works directly with her cooperative network — the people who actually grow the crop the world is buying.
Assam · Tea
Assam Heritage Tea Co. & the Small Tea Growers Association of Assam
Our first live deployment site, in partnership with the Small Tea Growers Association of Assam — representing thousands of smallholder farmers who grow the tea but rarely see the premium it commands.
Assam · Black Rice
Shri Upendra Rabha
Known as the Black Rice Man of Assam, Shri Rabha has spent decades preserving heirloom rice varieties in Goalpara. His work is the kind that traceability exists to protect — and to make legible to the world.
Assam · Tea Growers
Small Tea Growers Association of Assam
An MoU with the Association formalises our commitment to the smallholder farmer as the starting point — not an afterthought — of the traceability chain we're building.
Say Hello

If this resonates with you,
we'd like to hear from you

We're not looking for anything specific — if you grow these crops, buy them, study them, or simply care about where food comes from, we're happy to talk.