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Empowering farmers with easy to consume tech need of the hour: Khetibuddy CEO
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SME Times News Bureau | 20 May, 2022
Fuelled
by new-age technologies like drone surveillance, remote sensing and
artificial intelligence (AI)-driven solutions, India's agritech market
has the potential to reach $30-$35 billion by 2025.
One
of the key challenges faced by the agri-businesses is that there are
very few software platforms available which have an agri-first approach,
and can help them improve the farming process, increase yield and
reduce cost or achieve sustainability.
Vinay Nair, Co-founder and
CEO, Khetibuddy which is a Unified Agtech platform that strengthens
digital infrastructure of agribusinesses, tells IANS that remote
sensing, internet of things (IoT) and use of AI/ML have huge
applications in agriculture and the need of the hour is make the
technology agri-specific and easy to use.
Here are the excerpts from his interview:
Q: Tell us more about your Unified Agtech platform and how it empowers agri-businesses across India?
A:
Industries have flourished once they have access to data related to
their business. Agricultural data possesses the power to transform
agribusinesses. Agri-domain experts have now realized this and are
embracing the future with digitization.
One of the key challenges
faced by agri-businesses today in doing so, is that there are very few
software platforms which are available which have an agri-first
approach. Major agribusinesses either rely on customizing large ERP or
rely on available farm management applications which have the challenges
and limitations in customizing to suit their requirement.
It is
this gap which we are trying to address through our Unified agtech
platform. Khetibuddy's Agtech platform which is a SaaS
(software-as-a-service) offering, allows agri-businesses to monitor,
measure and manage their farms, farmers and the entire agri value chain.
It's a suite of modules from farm management, remote sensing, pest
management, m-commerce to mention a few.
Any organisation who is
in the business of serving farmers can use the platform based on their
goals. However, unlike other players, Khetibuddy is unique by providing
the science behind the tech as well. We provide ready-to-use crop
schedules and advisory, which can be customized based on the local
conditions with integration to weather, soil and satellite data sources.
If
the goal of an agri-business is improving farming process, increasing
yield, reducing cost or achieving sustainability then all of these goals
can be facilitated through our SAAS platform.
Q: How are you leveraging AI/ML to help farmers make better informed decisions?
A:
We use computer vision for pest and disease detection. What we have
done differently is enable agribusinesses to take over on the model's
learning curve for pests and diseases relevant to their geography with
minimal efforts. Our models are easier to train even by non-technical
teams from agribusinesses. We developed models for specific crops for
early pest and disease detection.
Importantly, we took a hybrid
approach for developing continuous model learning mode with support from
experienced entomologists in our team with a clear goal of avoiding
crop loss.
We are also using ML for statistical modelling methods
through which we estimate yields and currently working on detecting
crop grown at a cluster/district or state level through remote sensing.
These insights help private and public organizations to plan their
services accordingly. We have already started working on some of these
areas with some government units like Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK).
Q:
What are some of the emerging technologies that you are most excited
about over the medium term (3-5 years) in the agritech space?
A:
Covid taught us to use technology to continue business as usual. If you
are not able to visit the farms how do we ensure we serve the farmers,
which include remote farm management through remote sensing, audio/video
calls , have automated advisory services, build data models which help
in predicting patterns. Remote sensing, IOTand use of AI/ML have huge
applications in agriculture. The need of the hour is to make the
technology agri specific and easy to use and consume at the ground
level.
Q: You recently announced the launch of a dedicated
premium gardening app for your home platform. What is your vision behind
this and how has the user response been to this feature?
Did
you know that by spending only 15 minutes a day you can grow 60 per cent
of the food you consume daily right in your balcony or terrace? That's
what the app under the brand name 'Khetibuddy Home' helps you do.
Right
from selection of places and inputs to what care you need to take every
day to grow food at home, this app can be your gardening guide. Our
mission here was to encourage urban people to take up growing some food
at home and contribute towards self-sustainability.
We also have
curated training courses dedicated only for passionate gardeners through
a learning portal which also helps first time gardeners to take up
gardening. Since last year, we have on�boarded more than 50,000 home
growers on our platform. Now, we have added premium services for a fun
and personalized gardening experience. While we work on the larger cause
with farmers this allows people in urban cities to also be partially
self-sustainable by growing food from food.
Q: You were born in a cloud organisation. What does cloud technology allow you to do better?
A:
With the increase of broadband and 4G across rural India, Cloud helps
in the reach. We no longer have to worry about local infrastructure as
long as you have the internet, the technology is accessible which was
not the case earlier. Today, B2B has to follow the B2C experience, I
call it the 'touch generation'. Every consumer needs all services at
their fingertip. This is only possible with technologies like cloud and
mobile, so businesses also should be provided such services and not use
old technology.
AWS has been a great strategic partner. We grew
from 0-1 lakh users and we could plan to scale the platform whenever
needed which kept our costs in control with our multi-tenant
architecture on AWS. AWS helps us to give a promise of uptime to our
customers with their always on services.
Customers have the
comfort when they know we are on AWS which is a great help. Today, we
have a number of servers on production, development, which we use and a
variety of technology stack, if this infrastructure had to be maintained
by us, our time to be market ready would have increased at least by 2
times. We can focus on our development and not worry about
infrastructure needs.
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