BharatRohan, an agtech firm that provides drone-based crop monitoring services, announced a co-innovation partnership with AgHub, the Agri-innovation hub of Professor Jayashankar Telangana State Agricultural University (PJTSAU). 

The partnership leverages BharatRohan’s experience in Hyperspectral Imaging for agricultural crops, focusing on creating a spectral library to improve pest and disease detection in paddy and cotton crops. 

This initiative is expected to significantly benefit farmers by potentially increasing yields through a reduction in losses caused by pests, such as the Brown Plant Hopper and Pink Bollworm, and diseases like rice blast and boll rot, by 20-30%.

Founded in 2016 by Amandeep Panwar and Rishabh Choudhary, this Gurgaon-based agritech startup caters to 5,00,000 acres across 10 states. Some of its key customers include Dabur, ITC, More Megastores, Aachi among others. 

Amandeep Panwar, Co-founder of BharatRohan, said, “This partnership marks a significant milestone in our mission to empower farmers. Utilizing hyperspectral technology, we aim to provide invaluable insights leading to healthier crops, reduced input costs, and enhanced yields. Our collaboration with AgHub and PJTSAU underscores our dedication to sustainable and prosperous agriculture.”

The collaboration leverages hyperspectral imaging and advanced drone technology, helping in early detection and intervention for crop management. This integration is anticipated to lead to more sustainable farming practices and healthier crops.

Kalpana Sastry, MD, AgHub says “While the initial focus is on paddy and cotton crops, in a long-term goal we will expand this library to include a wider variety of crops, thereby supporting a broader spectrum of crops key to the agricultural sector. This is a pioneering step opening doors of research institutes and universities in collaborating with Agritech startups 

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Way back in 2010, when agtech was a relatively alien term, India had only about a dozen startups in this segment. Bangalore-based Cropin was one among those early agtech companies in the sector. A decade down the line, amidst over 1000 agtech startups, Cropin still remains the cream of the crop in the agtech space. 

Founded by two childhood friends Krishna Kumar and Kunal Prasad, the Bangalore-based company indeed had very humble beginnings. As agtech is all set to take centre stage, Cropin has traversed a long way to truly become a name to be reckoned with. 

This B2B player has digitized over 16 million acres of farmland, empowering over 7 million farmers (most of whom are smallholder farmers) to unlock the power of data and AI. Cropin Cloud, which the company says is the world’s first industry cloud for agriculture, provides predictive intelligence for over 200 million acres of farmland worldwide. Its investors include names like Google, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, JSR Corporation and ABC Impact among others. 

CIO Dimension caught up with Sujit Janardanan, Chief Customer & Marketing Officer of Cropin, to talk about Cropin’s story, its vision and the way forward. 

Watch the full interview here: 

Much of the company’s growth, says Sujit, can be attributed to its conscious decision to pivot away from being a point-solution provider to an ecosystem player. “Our vision is to be the backbone of the agriculture ecosystem, similar to how SWIFT is for the banking ecosystem or Amadeus for the flight booking ecosystem,” he adds. 

Cropin Cloud is a big leap in that direction. This platform envisions to bring in various stakeholders in the agricultural ecosystem – including startups who build agtech solutions and help them co-innovate. “This enables us to collectively unlock the value faster and deliver impact to businesses and farmers as soon as possible,” says Sujit. While Cropin has already helped seven million farmers, globally there are over 500 million farmers who can potentially benefit from technology. Therefore, speed is the need of the hour for the agriculture sector. “With Cropin Cloud, we are trying to help everyone move faster,” Sujit highlights. 

In this interview, he also touches upon Cropin’s plot-level predictive intelligence capabilities and forecasting models. 

Sujit, who previously led marketing at Google, AWS and NTT, will be talking at the upcoming COP28 Dubai about ‘Digital Innovations for climate-resilient agriculture’. 

The post Here’s how Cropin is building the tech backbone for global agriculture sector  appeared first on CIO Dimension.

Ekgaon is a startup technology platform which provides financial and agriculture services to farmers. Their technology solutions now connect the entire agriculture value chain – right from farm to market. Leveraging Artificial Intelligence, they provide customised advisory services to farmers which has led to higher farm productivity and enables them to connect to markets.

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