In a country where the majority of population hails from villages, agriculture will naturally be a major source of livelihood. More than half a billion Indians work in the agriculture sector. The Green Revolution did bring a lot of changes in the ways we used to grow crops. But it was nowhere close to what Smart Farming did for the farmers of India.
Smart farming introduced allowed many startups to ease farmers’ struggles and worked on an entirely different tangent. Different startups work in different ways to help the agriculture sector grow to its maximum potential.
In this article, we will talk about the most prominent smart farming startups of India. These startups have helped Indian Agricultural Industry in terms of supply chain management, better marketing and many other aspects of farming.
Gold Farm
A Bangalore based startup, Gold Farm aims to help farmers increase their income by going asset light. Gold Farm is essentially an agriculture equipment rental marketplace working through a mobile app. The AgroTech mogul was founded by Abhilash Thirupathy in 2012 and raised $3 million in 3 funding rounds since its inception.
Gold Farm also provides solar powered irrigation pumps to help farmers improve their yield.
Fasal
An innovative AI powered IoT platform, Fasal is a brainchild of Ananda Verma and Shailendra Tiwari and was founded in Jan 2018. Fasal is a Hindi word that means Harvest, and this is exactly what this platform focuses on.
Fasal helps agricultural ecosystems by using data science in conjunction with artificial intelligence. The platform helps in:
- Weather forecast
- Irrigation management
- Fertilizer, pesticides, weedicides, and fungicides application management
- Soil disease and viral breakout prediction
- Real time notifications about soil and crop condition
- Pest and crop disease management
In a short time since its inception, Fasal has garnered enough attention to raise $120K in seed funding.
Intello Labs
The most awarded AgroTech startup of India, Intello Labs was founded in 2016 by Milan Sharma, who also serves as the CEO of the company. Intello Labs primarily focuses on AI based solution for the agriculture industry.
Intello Labs benefits agriculture industry by:
- Substantially reducing quality testing duration to 2 minutes
- Real time data sharing across a multitude of screens and platforms
- Highest QA accuracy, exceeding 95%
- Objective quality assessment
- Testing samples on a wide spectrum of parameters
The company leverages upon machine intelligence to help farmers maximize their crop yield and tweak their farming as per the soil and yield sample results. The estimated revenue of the company is close to $2 million.
EM3 Agro Services
Rohtash Mal and Adwitiya Mal, a father-son duo launched EM3 Agro Services in 2014. The company helps farmers throughout their farming journey, right from farm development to post-harvest field management.
The company is also working on a full-fledged marketplace to help small farmers get access to every kind of agricultural need in terms of supplies and services.
EM3 Agro Services has raised a substantial $13.3 million funding and generated $6 million in revenue.
Tessol
Thermal Energy Service Solution Pvt. Ltd (Tessol) was founded in 2013 by Rajan Gupta. A cold storage and logistics company, Tessol helps farmers save their harvest by providing them with the right storage environment.
The company has generated a substantial revenue worth $3 million. Tessol is also among the leading last mile solution providers of India.
CropIn
CropIn Technologies was founded by Krishna Kumar in 2010. The company develops farming centric solutions such as farm management software. It’s amazing the way CropIn works. The company leverages upon machine learning, satellite monitoring and weather analysis. All this data enables farmers to get crop related data insights in real time.
And now, it’s time to address the elephant in the room…
Is Farming A Fruitful Venture?
Smart Agriculture, also known as Smart Farming, has enabled many people to realize the potential agriculture industry holds. Let’s take a look at the most talked-about success story in the realm of smart farming.
Pramod Gautam
Pramod was an automobile engineer before he chose to become a full-time farmer in 2006. His ancestral farm spanning over 26-acres saved his initial investment of acquiring land for his venture.
It all started with groundnuts and turmeric for Pramod, but the yield was too poor to break even his investments.
Undaunted by the failed attempt, he moved on to horticulture and started growing Toor Dal (Pigeon Pea), and fruits such as bananas, guavas, oranges, sweet limes and lemons.
When life gave him lemons, he was actually looking forward to it, because this is exactly what he had sown and reaped.
Pramod sells lentils under the brand name “Vandana” and generates more than$130K from each yield. His efforts of horticulture further generate an additional revenue of $16-18K.
Ask Pramod about his feat as farmer compared to being an automobile engineer, and he says Smart Farming has helped him achieve his goals. He is proud of his decision and motivates youth to indulge in farming.
Conclusion
Smart farming has revolutionised the agriculture industry. Farmers are now able to maximize their crop yield by knowing more about the soil, weather and many other factors. The advent of technology has also enabled farmers to avail better logistics and supply chain management services. Talk to a mobile app development company today to launch your own smart farming app. Unlock the doors to better farming and great revenues, while becoming the next big AgroTech Startup of India.
