Veterinary Medicine Distribution in Nepal: Agrovet Routes, Outbreak Demand and Expiry

Veterinary medicine sits between two trades. Like pharma, it lives on batches, expiry dates and trust in the supplier. Like agro inputs, it reaches farmers through agrovet shops in bazaars and villages, with long credit and demand that can jump overnight when a disease appears in a district. A company in this field needs a field team that is present at agrovets, clinics and large farms, stock records it can trace, and a credit policy that respects the farmer's cash cycle without sinking the business. This guide is organised around those needs. It is operational advice, not legal or clinical guidance; follow the rules that apply to your licence and products.

Who buys, and who decides

Customer	What they buy	Who influences the choice	How to cover them
Agrovet shop	Wide range, small packs, feed supplements	Shop owner, local vet or technician	Fixed beat, weekly or fortnightly
Veterinary clinic or private vet	Injectables, specific treatments	The vet	Representative call plan
Poultry and dairy farms	Larger packs, vaccines, routine treatments	Farm manager, consulting vet	Scheduled visits, agreed prices
Hatcheries and cooperatives	Planned volumes	Purchasing committee or owner	Account management, delivery schedule
Dealer or distributor	Cartons for a district	Margin, schemes, credit	Monthly stock and target review

In gamitrack, add each of these as a party with a type and location; field-added parties wait for approval. Party types also drive pricing: a default list, a list per party type, and overrides for individual farms or cooperatives, with the most specific price applied. Internal notes on a party hold agreements and visit history and are not visible to dealers.

Coverage is the usual weak point. Representatives tend to visit friendly clinics and nearby agrovets, while shops further out are seen once a quarter. Build routes with ordered stops per customer type, and once a month compare the planned list with visits actually completed. The gap is usually a handful of agrovets that buy from a competitor simply because nobody came.

A demand calendar shaped by weather and livestock

Veterinary demand follows the animals and the weather more than the festival calendar. Your own order history is the real guide, but many distributors plan around patterns like these:

Period	Common pattern	What to prepare
Pre-monsoon (Baisakh to Jestha)	Heat stress, preparation for the wet season	Supplements, routine treatments, dewormers
Monsoon (Asar to Bhadra)	Damp conditions, more disease pressure in many areas, roads cut	Higher stock at district depots before roads close
Before Dashain and Tihar	Goats, poultry and livestock prepared for festival sale	Poultry and small-ruminant lines at agrovets near markets
Winter (Mangsir to Magh)	Cold stress, especially in hill farms	Winter-related treatments and supplements
Year-round	Poultry batch cycles on commercial farms	Scheduled supply against farm plans

The point is not to predict disease. It is to have stock at the depots nearest the farms before roads and demand make it hard. See monsoon route and delivery planning for the transport side.

When demand jumps: a 72-hour routine

When a disease report spreads in a district, agrovets call, farmers queue, and a stock-out loses customers who may not come back. A simple routine helps.

Hour 0 to 12. Check stock of the relevant products at every branch. Low-stock views per branch show what is thin. Move stock to the nearest depot with a recorded transfer.

Hour 12 to 24. Call or visit the agrovets in the affected area. Officers record orders in the app with prices from the price list, and dispatch is all-or-nothing, so each agrovet's order is either fully on the truck or not dispatched.

Hour 24 to 72. Delivery staff see the amount due, location and directions, and record proof of delivery with GPS, a photo and the receiver's name. Far deliveries are flagged, so the manager knows which drops will take longest. Representatives visit clinics and large farms in the area and record complaints with product and batch.

Afterwards. Review how quickly stock arrived and which agrovets ran out. Adjust low-stock levels for the next season.

A hypothetical example

Suppose a distributor in the western Terai hears of a poultry disease in one district. The manager sees that the district depot has stock for only a few days of normal sales, transfers stock from the main branch the same day, and puts nine agrovets in the area on officers' routes for the next two days. Orders come in through the app, and the delivery team clears them by the third day. A week later, the manager raises low-stock levels for those products at that depot. Every detail here is invented for illustration.

Batch, expiry and the short-dated conversation

Agrovets resist stock close to expiry, and they are right to. Discipline on your side keeps short-dated stock from becoming a dispute.

• Receive every lot as a batch with its expiry date into a branch. Stock movements are append-only, so a complaint can be traced to the lot and to the agrovets that received it.
• Dispatch the oldest lots first, and review the expiry list on a fixed day each week.
• Decide early. Lots inside your own cut-off window are pushed with a scheme, transferred to a branch where they move faster, or returned to the supplier under your agreement.
• Check dealer stock monthly. Dealer monthly stock reports compare expected closing stock with the actual count, and the variance shows where lots are sitting.
• Write the return policy and apply it through recorded returns with photos, never by phone promise.

For the method behind first-expiry-first-out, see batch and expiry control.

Credit that follows the farmer's cash

Agrovets often give their farmers credit until animals or eggs are sold, and then ask the same of you. Some credit is unavoidable. The aim is to see it clearly.

• Payment due days run from dispatch and stay fixed, so "the bill came late" is easy to check.
• Payments by cash, eSewa, Khalti, Fonepay, bank or cheque are allocated to the oldest invoice first, and the party statement and aging show each agrovet's real position.
• A weekly collection plan gives each officer a list, and Friday's review against actual payments shows who needs a visit.
• Review aging before the peak months, when credit tends to stretch.

Invoices follow the IRD format, numbered per fiscal year with Bikram Sambat dates, with VAT only on taxable lines; check the current rules for your products at ird.gov.np.

Questions field representatives ask

Do I have to take a photo at every visit? Visits are checked against the party's geofence and carry a photo. Visits outside the geofence, very short visits and missing photos are flagged for the manager to review, so it is simpler to take the photo.

What if there is no signal at a hill farm? The day's location trail is kept on the phone and synced later. Orders, visits and payments need a connection, so record them once you are back in coverage.

How are my targets set? Officers have monthly targets in amount or kg with a daily pace; dealers have quarterly or annual targets by fiscal quarter.

Related reading and next step

Related reading: poultry feed sales and stock, batch and expiry control, and the pharma distribution and agro inputs pages.

Start with one depot, your top twenty agrovets and batch-based receiving. Plans and the free trial are on the pricing page, or contact us to discuss your setup.