Solutions · Agrochemicals & seeds
Since June 2025 every insecticide label must carry a QR code — and an empty genuine bottle is still worth money to a counterfeiter.
A tamper-evident seal over the cap, a code the farmer can scan before the bottle is opened, and a code the retailer claims when it is sold.
What a fake costs you here
Farmers perceive 30% of agro-inputs as counterfeit, and 35% encountered one in the last year — the highest encounter rate of the six sectors surveyed.
Source: ASPA–CRISIL, State of Counterfeiting in India 2025
75% of those purchases happened at a local agri-input retailer.
Source: ASPA–CRISIL, State of Counterfeiting in India 2025
Farmers would pay the highest premium of any buyer group for guaranteed genuine: 14%.
Source: ASPA–CRISIL, State of Counterfeiting in India 2025
Non-genuine pesticides were about 25% of the market by value in FICCI's 2015 study — the figure ASPA–CRISIL still cites in 2025.
Source: FICCI, 2015 study, cited in ASPA–CRISIL 2025
ASPA–CRISIL surveyed 1,639 consumers across India; these are their answers, not seizure data.
Who scans, in order
The people who handle it: krishi kendra, agri-input retailer, dealer, farmer, field officer.
01
Distributor
checks the shelf code
02
Krishi kendra owner
claims the code when it is sold
03
Farmer
scans before the bottle is opened
04
Field officer
sees where it was scanned
The regulation
Yes, and it is dated. Since 4 June 2025 every insecticide label must carry a QR code (Insecticides (First Amendment) Rules, 2025, G.S.R. 367/368(E) of 3 June 2025). Labels had six months to change; stock on old labels cannot be sold after about December 2027. The code must open the manufacturer's own web address and carry at least a unique identifier or GTIN, the batch number and the manufacturing and expiry dates. The rule asks for a batch-level code — a serialised code per pack goes further, which is where the anti-refill case starts. Confirm the clause with counsel, and two things in it: whether the fields must sit inside the code or may be shown by the page it opens, and whether that page must be on your own domain (today an AVRA code opens avrascan.com; a brand web address is on our roadmap, not shipped).
What we would print
The code on the cap seal or the induction-seal liner, so opening the bottle destroys it — a hologram seal is the strongest version, a printed tamper-evident seal the cheaper one. Dual Code: the shelf code for the farmer before purchase, the hidden code under the seal. On a shrink-sleeved bottle, put the shelf code in the lowest-shrink band and map the artwork.
What each substrate can carry, and where a format cannot hide a second code: the substrate table.
How it runs
AVRA Verify, with AVRA Rewards for the retailer.
AVRA Verify: Product Authentication
AVRA Verify puts a unique, single-use code on every unit a brand ships, printed into whatever it already buys — a label, a carton, a pouch, a sleeve — by its own printer. The code is ten characters from a 31-character alphabet with no lookalikes — roughly 8 × 10¹⁴ possibilities — so it cannot be guessed. It is dead when it is printed and only starts answering when the print run passes QC and the batch is activated, which is why a leaked print file or a press overrun verifies nothing. A consumer opens the camera, scans, and reads a plain verdict in under two seconds with no app and no login. Where the pack can hide a second code there are two: a shelf code anyone can check before buying, and a hidden code — under a scratch panel, a cap seal, a carton flap or the inside web of a pouch — that only the buyer can reach.
How AVRA Verify works →AVRA Rewards: Channel Incentives
The krishi kendra owner decides which bottle goes across the counter, so the retailer is the person a reward has to reach. AVRA Rewards pays per unit, to the person holding it. The reward sits behind a second factor the buyer had to physically reach — a code under a scratch panel, or a second QR inside the pack — so it cannot be claimed off a shelf. One phone is one identity across every brand on the platform; a wallet is per brand. Campaigns carry their own rate, window and budget, and the budget is checked under a lock at the moment of claim. Payouts run on the brand’s own Razorpay X or Cashfree account, so AVRA never holds the brand’s reward money.
How AVRA Rewards works →The objection you have
“My farmers do not read English and half of them have a feature phone.”
The first half is real, and the scan page answers it: it is in English, Hindi, Gujarati and Marathi, chosen from the phone's language and switchable on the page. The second half matters less than it did — but if feature-phone reach is decisive for your channel, say so on the call, because we do not have an SMS or USSD verification path and a competitor does.
The scan page's languages →Where to start
One high-value formulation, one state, one season. The refilled-bottle problem is concentrated, and so is the proof.
It is normal here
Dhanuka's Dhan Saathi, UPL Farmily, Bayer Seal Scan (“Scanning the QR-Code on the Bayer Safety Seal … provides you an immediate response about product authenticity”), nurture.retail scan-to-earn.
Source: Google Play listings, observed 17 Sep 2026
Print one batch and scan it yourself.
The fastest way to judge this is a sheet of real labels and a phone.
Trust, made visible.