Kaidee.com, Thailand's largest online marketplace, is expanding into a new vertical market called Farmkaidee, a space for Thai farmers to meet directly with customers.
The new section was introduced to cut out the middleman and provide more revenue opportunities for farmers.
Of the 40 million workers in Thailand, 12 million or 31% are farmers, but they contribute just 10% of the country's GDP and have the lowest income per person, said Tiwa York, chief executive and head coach of Kaidee.
By embracing smartphones and the internet, farmers can connect with customers directly.
On the Kaidee website, the word "tractor" is the 11st most popular search term, showing the public's strong interest in farming.
Mr Tiwa said Farmkaidee brings simple, easy-to use features to Thai farmers. There are two sections:
A farmer's market for selling fresh products directly to business such as restaurants and wholesalers (F2B) or to retail consumers (F2C).
An agriculture market where farmers sell to other farmers (F2F), e.g. rice sold to livestock farmers for feeding animals, and businesses sell to farmers (B2F), including trade in tractors, fertiliser and insecticide.
All services charge no fee, but the hope is businesses that like selling to farmers will consider a paid advertising model.
Since the beta launch in the past three months, the number of visits to Farmkaidee has increased to 200,000 a month from 100,000 previously.
Mr Tiwa said Kaidee.com had 35 million customers and 1.85 million posts at the end 2017, with sales worth 100 billion baht in 316 categories.
The website has three vertical sectors: Rodkaidee, Mocykaidee and Farmkaidee.
The company plans to introduce a new category soon. Kaidee.com aims to break even by 2019.