Onions on Wheels: Bengaluru gets mobile vans selling at Rs 35/kg to beat price surge

Bengaluru: Expect to see a mobile van rolling through your neighborhood, selling onions at just Rs 35 per kg.

On Monday, the Bengaluru branch of the National Cooperative Consumers' Federation of India (NCCF), under the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, launched mobile vans offering onions at subsidized rates, with a limit of 3 kg per person to prevent hoarding.

This initiative, part of the Price Stabilisation Fund (PSF), ensures that consumers have access to quality onions from Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh's Rabi harvest at lower prices, protecting them from sudden market fluctuations.

As of Monday, onion prices at the Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC), Yeshwanthpur, ranged from Rs 45 to Rs 52 per kg, while retail prices were between Rs 60 and Rs 70 per kg. The mobile vans will offer onions at Rs 35 per kg.

Currently, Bengaluru has 15 trucks, each with a 30-tonne capacity, covering locations such as Nandini Layout, Sunkadakatte, Nagarabhavi, Rajajinagar, Laggere, Malleswaram, Yeshwantpur, and Majestic. By Thursday, the city will have 50 mobile vans, according to Ravi Chandra, the NCCF branch manager.

"There is a sales cap of three kg that each person can purchase to avoid hoarding," he said, adding that the onion sourced from Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh last longer and can be stored for several months, allowing the NCCF to import them to Karnataka for sale. 

"We have at least 5 lakh tonnes of onion in stock from these two states. Therefore, the supply of onion through vans will go on until January, until the per kg prices in the market go down. We will onboard more vehicles each week to cover different parts of the city and the state," said Chandra. 

On Tuesday, the NCCF will launch the mobile van sales programme in Hubballi-Dharwad, Gadag and Vijayapura, and aim to cover the whole state by next week. It will also