Adatdar

Adatdar or aratdar a person who owns a warehouse, more specifically, a commission agent for stocking and selling different kinds of agricultural goods. He works mainly for petty traders and small businessmen. Petty traders from remote rural areas depend on him to sell their products at the appropriate time with regard to calculating the high return of profit in the market. Usually small traders living in localities far away from market place cannot organise marketing of their products in a way that ensures the best profits. They establish a formal contract with an aratdar, who by selling their products in the market timely will take a commission on those products. Thus the owners of the products are able to catch up with market trends and the aratdar can take a considerable share of the profit as commission.

The transaction terms are usually fixed before the aratdar starts to work on behalf of the traders. Aratdar may be ranked as small, medium or large, depending on the number of their warehouses or the nature and strength of their network with buyers. Usually big traders need not depend on an aratdar, as they themselves own warehouses and have strong transaction interaction with other traders. Sometimes aratdars exploit naive petty traders by selling the products in abnormally high or unexpected prices. Aratdars normally run their business through an office situated in the market place. Petty traders contact them in the market place along with their goods and fix the transaction terms and once fixed, the transaction terms cannot be violated later. Traders widely deal with aratdars known to them for fairly long periods and consider them to be reliable. [Sharmin Naaz]