HYDERABAD : The Covid-19 pandemic has shut down many businesses, but it has been an opportunity for online service providers to strive. As distancing is the mantra, more and more people, including farmers, are looking towards the internet for their daily needs.
Madhapur-based Kisanwala was launched last year to make farmers self-reliant. This startup, incubated at T-Hub, is the brainchild of Parag Modi and Suresh Atluri. It has over 1,000 registered users in Telangana, Maharashtra and Haryana, and they plan to make inroads into more states after the pandemic eases.
Speaking to Express, Parag said: “ We aim to make farmers self-reliant with modern day technology, information, high quality inputs, and marketing support by providing customised solutions for each farmer.” The startup’s app provides farmers agricultural input, output, financial services, forecasting and advisory services.Parag added: “Kisanwala strives to connect farmers directly with institutional buyers and negotiation services so as to realise the best price for their produce while ensuring guaranteed sale.
We provide financial services to farmers including credit and insurance along with financial advisory so as to enable them to make sound decisions for savings, investment, expansion. This can help them break out from the clutches of exploitative informal credit markets.”The startup uses intelligent technologies including Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Data Analytics in order to advise farmers on weather conditions and to advise them for better crop growth and yields.”
We are working with some premium agriculture technology institutions in India and providing them a platform to conduct their research at the grassroot level so that they can support the farmers in having a high quality produce and encourage sustainable practices,” Parag said.The startup also gives opportunities to traders to partner with it to expand their business in the agricultural ecosystem. “We provide our partners a digital platform to run advertisements for your quality products.
We also give them access to advanced technology tools for collecting market intelligence for their brands and services,” explained Parag.Before launching the startup, the founders conducted a survey among 1,200 farmers to gauge their comfort level while using apps. They found that in almost every family, there was at least one member who was tech-savvy and was familiar with how smartphones work.