“The World of Predictive and Prescriptive Ag-Analytics is here”
Focus Agritech had an opportunity to interact with Mr. Kunal Prasad who is the co-founder and COO of CropIn. Mr. Kunal Prasad is a visionary who could see the scope of technology and data in the farming sector way back in 2010 and this thought gave birth to ‘CropIn’. This hard work has paid off as CropIn recently raised USD 20 million in a Series C funding round led by the ABC World Asia.
He shared with us his views on how the farming sector has evolved over the years and how CropIn has come up with innovative solutions to complex challenges in the agriculture sector. Mr. Kunal Prasad holds an MBA degree from Great Lakes Institute of Management and is putting his learnings of the management principles and strategies to reform the Agriculture sector in India.
Focus Agritech:
Q1) We along with the Agritech Industry would like to congratulate you on the recent Series C fund raising. How has this journey been for the Founding team from ideation to creating a business of so much significant value?
Mr. Kunal Prasad:
It has been a fabulous journey filled with lots of learnings for us so far. It gives us a great sense of satisfaction and happiness to see something that we envisioned back in 2010 finally getting the deserved recognition and creating value for our partners especially the farmers and the businesses that we work with. This drives us to excel and keeps our team motivated.
When we started this organisation in 2010, there were many constraints but we really wanted to bring in transformation in the field of agriculture. We wanted to bring in transparency and visibility across the entire agri value chain in order to remove the inefficiencies. This is where we started building applications and platforms to provide farmers with real-time access to information. Our objective was to connect the field team to farmers and businesses in order to make real-time information flow and decision making possible.
This inspired us to develop “SmartFarm”. SmartFarm is a complete farm management solution with a robust and flexible system for farm data management with traceability and output predictability. And as we started growing, we learnt a lot of different innovative ways which we can use and bring in transformation.. This motivated us to expand internationally and in 2015 after having set up our business in India, we identified markets that were receptive to our products like Africa, South-East Asia, and parts of Europe.
As a business, our focus has always been to bring cutting-edge innovative solutions to our partners, helping our partners become productive, efficient and scalable. With AI, ML and data playing a major role in transforming business nowadays, we are very well aligned to the vision of leveraging these technologies and are very excited for the future.
Focus Agritech:
Q2) ‘Maximizing per Acre Value’ and ‘Making every Farm traceable’ are two of the key driving forces for your business. We would want to hear more about this vision and the potential that you see in technology to help you achieve these objectives.
Mr. Kunal Prasad:
Our core business value is to increase the per-acre value which means that we want to increase the overall output of an acre of land. The output can vary from income opportunities to sustainable initiatives to connecting all stakeholders from buyers to sellers efficiently. The vision behind this is to reduce the cost of data transfer and create a sustainable yet scalable business model especially for developing economies.
In order to uplift the entire ecosystem, we want to make every farm traceable. By making all 140 million farmers in India and their farmlands traceable, we want to create an ecosystem for efficient information exchange and help create value for the entire value chain.
This has been our larger vision and I am proud to say that we have been able to achieve significant milestones in fulfilling our vision.
Focus Agritech:
Q3) CropIn is an intuitive, intelligent system that intends to deliver decision-making tools that bring consistency, dependability, and sustainability to Agri-businesses. What has been the feedback on your SaaS platform by the end users and what is your view on the adoption of similar technologies in agriculture at large?
Mr. Kunal Prasad:
Adoption as you know is a time taking process, especially in the agriculture sector when we are talking about small farmers who are very apprehensive to change unless they have seen the transformation with their own eyes. We have learned in our journey that transformation happens over a period of 2-3 crop seasons after farmers believe and understand the true value of the system.
We had an interesting experience when we worked with the World Bank in Bihar and Madhya Pradesh on an initiative called ‘Sustainable Livelihoods and Adaptation to Climate Change (SLACC)’. This was one of our first projects on climate mitigation for small farmers. Working with over 8,000 farmers primarily women we realised that in the first year the adoption was around 45% of the climate advisories that our team provided.
One of the primary reasons for low adoption was the lack of clarity and trust among farmers. However, as they realized the value of our advisory over time the adoption increased to 72% next year and to 85% in the 3rd year. So, though it is a time taking process, with the right product and solution, success can definitely be achieved.
On the other hand, from an institution’s perspective, the adoption is much faster. In current times, with the widespread adoption and usage of smartphones, people are very confident in using mobile-based applications. Thus, the cycle time for adoption has reduced significantly in the case of institutions.
Focus Agritech:
Q4) Your offering stack is built of products like SmartFarm, SmartRisk, and SmartWare? How intuitive, user-friendly and easy are these solutions for your end users and what is your technology road map for bringing these technologies into the hands of ordinary farmers on the ground?
Mr. Kunal Prasad:
Our focus as an organization has always been enterprise. If we have to influence and make an impact on the lives of over 570 million farmers across the globe, we cannot go to every farmer. Since the farmers are engaging with the ecosystem players, our strategy and objective are to engage with these institutions and to support them to adopt technology to engage with the farmers.
Our products are also aligned in this direction. When we started with SmartFarm, it was all about making farm production management efficient. The follow up product was to fix the supply chain gaps such as post-harvest losses and as we progressed, we understood the importance of satellite data and reduced manual intervention in agriculture.
Our most recent solution is the “AcreSquare Application”. This is B2B / B2C application wherein businesses can engage with farmers and give them advisories, news, training material, etc. It established a two-way communication channel with the farmers. The primary focus of this solution is to connect and share knowledge sharing. Our vision is to reach 20 million farmers in the next two years.
CropIn’s offers an effective digital platform with an intuitive and satisfying user experience that works to the advantage of the users for a smooth and rapid adoption of the digital application. CropIn’s cloud platform enables effective communication between users at different levels of the organizational hierarchy.
Focus Agritech:
Q5) What is the role you would expect Government bodies and regulators to play to give a boost to the Agritech sector in India?
Mr. Kunal Prasad:
The current government is doing some great work in promoting Agritech and also the entire startup ecosystem. The government has always been our biggest collaborative partner and our focus is to work closely with them. We have had successful engagements with the central government as a technical partner of the ‘Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana’ wherein we implemented AI-based crop assessment solutions.
We have also worked with the Punjab Government where we are focused on the traceability of produce coming out of Punjab and taking it to global markets. This produce includes basmati and potatoes to name a few. We also work with other government institutions like IFC, NABARD, the World Bank, etc.
So certainly, the government, public sector, and development agencies are a core focus area for us as they do a lot of investments and influence the way farmers are doing agriculture.
Focus Agritech:
Q6) The genesis of CropIn is based on the gamut of problems farmers are facing in the country ranging from operational inefficiencies, no predictability of yield, non-availability of finance, soil degradation, pest infestation, and diseases, etc. Having set up a successful business, what are a few of your CSR initiatives for the farmers?
Mr. Kunal Prasad:
We subsidize our products for smaller farmers but we also run it through our partners since our field team is not directly involved in the implementation. Having said that we work with co-operatives, non-profit organizations, social entrepreneurs, etc. in order to create value for small farmers by providing subsidized products and services.
We also engage with the CSR arms of agribusinesses and help them to achieve their CSR objectives. CropIn’s digital platform provides effective solutions that promote sustainable and climate-smart agriculture and enhance the lives and livelihoods of farmers.
In an endeavor to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls, CropIn has collaborated with a CSR arm of one of the largest private telecom organisations in India to create a profitable opportunity for women farmers to play key decision making roles in agricultural activities, and empower them technologically using CropIn’s user-friendly software solution for farm management. In a similar effort, we are working with thousands of women farmers in Bihar and Madhya Pradesh in a partnership with the World Bank and the Government of India to encourage them in their economic participation and active decision-making.
Vote of Thanks!
Focus Agritech would like to thank Mr. Kunal Prasad for sharing his diverse thoughts on the state of Indian Agriculture, Immense possibilities for the future, and CropIn’s vision to build a data-driven sustainable future for the farmers. We wish him the very best for his future endeavors and would continue to collaborate with the firm to bring ‘Digital Transformation in India’.
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