Kissan Gudam is a seed company's bet on storing grain and lending against it
The Lahore storage venture of Haji Sons Group has a bank partner, a development funder and a State Bank launch behind it. It has not said how many farmers it serves.
A farmer who sells wheat at harvest sells when prices are lowest. Kissan Gudam, a Lahore company, wants that farmer to keep the grain in a sealed bag and borrow against it instead. The name means farmer's warehouse, and the business is simple to state: hold crops after harvest, and lend against them. It has a bank partner, a development funder and a launch attended by a State Bank deputy governor. It has not published how many farmers it serves, how much grain it holds or what its loans cost.
A seed company's second business
Kissan Gudam does not look like a typical startup story. There is no seed round to report and no accelerator demo day. It is a venture of Haji Sons Group, which says it has worked in Pakistani agriculture for about four decades, starting with hybrid seeds and adding greenhouses, drip irrigation and solar equipment for farms. Farhan Tahir is chief executive and Anam Tahir is chief technology officer, and both are listed as cofounders. The advisers include Jordna Dey, chief executive of the storage supplier GrainPro, and Tahir Saleemi, who runs Haji Sons.
The structure matters. Kissan Gudam is a unit of an established agribusiness, with the parent's seed customers and farmer relationships close at hand, so it did not have to find its first customers from nothing. The company has not said when it was founded or how much capital the parent has put in.
The problem it describes is old. Farmers who need cash to repay loans and buy inputs tend to sell right after harvest, when supply is highest and prices are lowest, and grain kept in poor conditions loses weight and quality. Kissan Gudam's website says only 10 percent of Pakistan's grain output has access to organised storage and that the lack of storage and credit costs the sector more than $1.3 billion a year. Both are the company's own figures and we could not verify them.
Grain in a bag, money in a wallet
The storage comes from GrainPro. Its hermetic units are portable sealed bags and cocoons that can be set up near farming communities, which cuts the cost of hauling grain to a distant warehouse. Sealing starves insects and mould of the air and moisture they need, so the grain does not have to be fumigated. The company's website adds sensor monitoring, mobile quality testing in the field, paperless operations, a trading platform called Kissan Mandi for spot and forward sales, and the KissanPay app.
The financial piece rests on a rule from 2019. The State Bank amended its prudential regulations that year so banks could accept electronic warehouse receipts as collateral for produce held in warehouses accredited by collateral management companies, a category the securities regulator had just created. The change matters most to small farmers with no land to pledge, because the stored produce itself becomes the security. Kissan Gudam says it finances up to 70 percent of a commodity's value and pays out in about 45 minutes. In plain terms, a farmer who stores grain worth Rs100 can draw up to Rs70 without selling it, and the lender keeps a Rs30 cushion if prices fall. The company has not published its profit rates, fees or repayment periods.
Partners, one after another
In July 2023 the company announced a collaboration with FasalPay, an agri fintech, to combine storage, inputs and credit. Farhan Tahir said the aim was to let farmers store their crops safely and reach a wide range of buyers digitally. In August 2026 Karandaaz Pakistan agreed to provide funding and strategic support to pair storage, digital financial services and market access. The signing was attended by Karandaaz chief executive Waqas ul Hasan, both Kissan Gudam cofounders and an economic officer from the US Embassy in Islamabad. No amount was disclosed.
The biggest step came in October. Kissan Gudam and aik by BankIslami launched KissanPay at the Pakistan Agriculture Connections Expo. State Bank Deputy Governor Saleem Ullah and Ahmed Umair, the prime minister's coordinator on agriculture and food security, inaugurated it and together disbursed the first financing to a farmer. Kissan Gudam supplies the warehouses and the farmer network, while the bank supplies its banking as a service platform and Shariah compliant financing.
“Speed is the difference between a fair price and a distress sale.”
“The future of financial services lies in embedding banking into the ecosystems where economic activity takes place.”
Kissan Gudam is not alone. Faysal Bank and Waseela Pakistan signed an agreement in February 2026 to offer Shariah compliant farm financing under the same electronic warehouse receipt framework. At the expo, Haji Sons also reported more than 5,000 visitors to its stand, where it showed grain samples stored sealed in 2018, 2021 and 2023 beside samples kept in ordinary packaging, and held talks with food processors and biscuit makers about supply.
What a lender needs to see
A sealed sample that stays sound for years shows what hermetic storage does, which is the part of the model a visitor can see. It says nothing about the part that matters to a lender, which is how many loans are repaid on time. A 70 percent advance protects a lender against a 30 percent fall in grain prices, but sealed storage fixes spoilage, not price.
Under a banking as a service arrangement the bank does the lending, so the quality of the receipts decides the losses: whether the grain is really there and of the stated grade. Kissan Gudam's sensors and field testing are what stand behind them. For a farmer, the choice will come down to the profit rate set against what a trader would pay for the same crop at harvest, and that rate has not been disclosed.
The company's website shows no figures for storage sites, tonnes held or farmers served, and the loans made so far are not stated either. The October launch described a single loan, handed to one farmer by two officials on stage. Neither Kissan Gudam nor aik by BankIslami has said how many have followed.
