Mr. Rajesh Ranjan, Founder and CEO, Krishify, Gurugram, Haryana, discusses digital interventions in agriculture.
Krishify was started in 2019 with an intent to build social network of farmers and dedicated to agriculture where farmers could join the network, engage themselves, and connect with the other stakeholders to discuss about their needs and requirements. We build farmers’ profile at our end to work with different stakeholders, Agri brands, and companies to give a targeted community access to market and market research survey. I see many Agri input companies in the last 5 years with changed trends, and companies want to have their online presence felt post covid. So seed companies and agro chemical companies are creating their own YouTube channel with lot of informative and useful content for the farmers. Also there is a business opportunity for Krishify as it can go deeper into the data of farmers as to who are buying their products, their actual customers distributors, and retailers. But the information of the farmers wo are actually buying and using their products in the soil has always remained elusive. This hinders the growth of companies that have already their presence in certain areas, and those who want to sell their products. The concept of remarketing is missing, which is a potential loss for the companies. They have to depend on other for pushing their product.
But if the companies had a clear idea of who their real customers are, the farmers who bought their product, it is useful for remarketing, crop selling, and also research activities where they can do market survey to get the feedback on the product. We have different kinds of Agri input companies, mainly dealing in market linkage forward and backwards. Some companies started farm level aggregation concept where there was a myth that farmers sell to local aggregators and transporters, but here is where they get fully exploited. But many of them reverted to some other model, but the major problem was aggregation on the ground due to limited information. For example, if there is a demand for capsicum in the market, we should know who are the farmers growing it in the vicinity of the market, if it is ready for harvest, but there is a gap in the information, and so it becomes highly inefficient as there was operational and logistical challenges. So the logistics should be built to collect from every farm, but the problems of grading, sorting, packing, and the financials with the farmers were there. Price may be higher than what the local aggregator would offer because of the trust. When we try to do the business directly with the farmer, we have to pay a premium for that which is not sustainable in the business in the short term perspective but may be yes in the long term.
Lot of companies started innovating two types of further intervention. One was to just aggregate everything at the farm level. But this may not happen because all commodities have value chain as they are sourced, treated, packed and procured, and then reach the market to get maximum outcome. So it was felt to focus on specific commodities where we can go deep and understand each interaction in the value chain, the importance of each value chain. The other part was to build a model where we do not have to worry about the farmers’ level because it is highly fragmented. So we go one level ahead with local aggregators who have built their learning and educated themselves doing this for decades. So they deal with the farmers, company deals with aggregators, and build supply chain.
Input, output, and agritech companies on input side created market places, the market is huge but fragmented with some fundamental problems. One is timely and right advisory, a personalised one. Each farmer is different, and we cannot standardise the advisory. The farmers cannot work based on the advisory given on the TV because it is personalised to the crop and not to the farmers. Farmers definitely need help and access to quality input, financial help, and forward linkage. So lot of agritech companies have come up giving advisory with intent to sell input, but again the challenge is there is demand but fulfilment becomes problematic. In the market, we do not store products or have inventory, but we work with sellers and get the demand fulfilled with the help of aggregators. When the farmers live in remote areas, the farmer willing to purchase online may not have easy retail access in their areas. So sending products to these areas is difficult. Whoever follows eCommerce model is successful because of the high returns. There is a cost of return involved apart from the forward logistics cost, which makes the model quite unsustainable. Agritech is working around input phase, and farmers need somebody to answer their questions, validate that this is the right product for their farm. Somebody who is qualified enough has to give the advisory because the situation may worsen, and they see low margins. The way the whole distribution model is build since decades, there is a set factor. The company gives product to distributors, wholesalers, and retailers with minimal margin. In branded highbred seeds the margin is minimal. So the company becomes stockist first, buy product from the other company, store them, but because of the low margin, the business takes a hit further. The model that finally evolved was to have a store, franchise, partners, through these we can reach out to the farmers. The margin will be slightly thicker, and we do not have to invest on the last logistics as we have hyper local presence. By adding our own brands into categories which have higher margins, some companies set up their business in this way.
Financial issue is the next issue as most of the farmers do not have credit history, so any bank or lender has difficulty in deciding whether to give loan to the farmer or not, if yes, how much to give, how much risk is involved, and the rate of interest. Few innovations have helped happened in this direction. But we can accompany those who understands the farmers much deeper in considering their profile and cropping pattern, assets, and ownership, cashflow, and the company that can work closely with a bank to give credit access to the farmers. I see digital intervention get opportunities here. FMCG brands want to trace everything till the farm level, and the input from the digital intervention can give the input to help the agritech companies to move forward.
Krishify is a social network and a data company. We select month or year range, select the date, the products, and we get the cluster of farmers wo are interested in using these products. We can track the data of the farmers at district or gram panchayat level. We have thousands of farmers working with us. We can find out the area and what people are looking for, the pattern or sowing and harvesting, and tell the farmers about the behaviour in each district in the last few seasons. We can get the details on the availability of seeds, agro chemicals, and even disease outbreak. We can warn the farmers in advance and suggest the strategies. We can also suggest market activity where the products will be in demand in a particular season and help the farmers plan distribution. We can personalise the content for the farmers and use the data to help companies for better strategies and market research.
What are some of the key digital technologies that have shown promise in transforming the Agri sector?
Awareness is the key factor. Unless farmers are aware of what is new happening and the new technologies or new type of farming, know about successful cases, it is difficult. If some farmer tried a new method in paddy cultivation and achieved higher yield, the digital tools help us to make farmers aware of this practice. So they can start practising these methods. They can extrapolate the example in the event of advisory seeing some early signs of a disease outbreak in a particular area, the farmers in those areas will be aware that they will also face the same issue. Even before it happens in their farmland, we send notification to all the farmers to be cautious about the disease and get prepared to face the situation. This is the preventive measure we can take to prevent the farm getting affected. All the areas can have digital intervention involved.
How do digital interventions help in innovating crop yield and overall Agri productivity? Can you tell us some success stories where digital solutions have significantly impacted small scale farmers in developing countries?
Personalised advisory for the farmers help them. Data on the per acre yield in Maharashtra sugarcane farmers being less than the yield achieved by the farmers in Uttar Pradesh helps farmers becoming aware of what the farmers in Uttar Pradesh do to improve the yield. There could be better farming practices and personal advisory. Farmers in Maharashtra generally get the consultation and advisory solutions from crop experts and consultants and digital companies. This is a massive improvement in digital innovation, and the tools can give personal advisory to the farmers to increase the overall yield and profitability. There are lot of such cases. If we look at countries like China, the yield has improved over the years in certain crops though initially the farm size was similar to what Indian farmers have. Their productivity has increased massively. In countries like South Asian countries like Vietnam, some of the crops have increased yield. In India there are multiple pockets where there are improvements especially in horticulture. So we see that such innovations have happened with better input, products, seed, and digital intervention helps the farmers with better, faster, and personalised advisory.
What are the major challenges the farmers may encounter when adopting digital interventions, and how can they be mitigated?
Farmers may often be new to digital technologies and even to a smart phone. It is a challenge for them to understand and use the digital solutions to the maximum potential. Companies are working on this segment. At Krishify, with a large network, we know the challenges and are working on simplifying the process. We should simplify the overall app experience so that the farmers are able to use, consume it irrespective of the regions they are from, profile, and digital literacy, or their language. We are trying to bypass the barriers as the personal advisory or digital information was not personalised and was cumbersome to not only farmers but to all. We are trying to simplify it so that the farmers can subscribe and get the information. Trust is next challenge. Though digitally things are easy to share, we do not know how trustworthy they are. So we have some methods to know the credibility of the person sharing the information on the platform so that we know if it is a reliable source of information and follow it or ignore it.
What measures are taken to ensure digital intervention are accessible to farmers from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds? How do you see the role of AI and Machine Learning shaping the future of agriculture?
Smartphone intervention is a revolutionary intervention. Whatever be the socioeconomic strata of the people, they can access Krishify and get the information. The others cannot be reached by any company. So we are building features to enable non-smart phone holders also to benefit with some of the features. Our experts panel will reach out to them in case of any concern and address them. Through some IVR based solutions, farmers can ask questions and get replies. We use AI at multiple levels with videos from creators, experts and brands, so automatic tagging happens which is not manually possible. Understanding the users and their requirements and to decide if the content would be relevant to them will be possible by AI and machine learning. We create personalised information on everything. We can personalise their pack of practices and advisory solutions for ever single farmer with data available. Even if the farmer does not have credit access or history in the past, based on the AI data, we can create a database and find out if he deserves a loan or not. There are lot of other things like quality of produce, right price, and touchpoints at every level.
How does IoT device contribute to development of smart farming practices? What would be the crucial area for further research and development in the field of digital intervention in the field of agriculture in future?
We develop the platform and rely on our parameters to do that, and we help them reach out the right set of farmers and information. Any kind of vision around sustainability, agriculture, regenerative farming using digital intervention to support will be needed. Farmers should be made aware of regenerative farming, support it with right kind of advisory and market linkages with right price. Sustainable farming is what the ecosystem should work toward with digital intervention to move forward.
Mr. Rajesh Ranjan
Founder
Krishify
Gurugram, Haryana
Email: rajesh@krishify.com
Phone: 9535990524
Krishify was started in 2019 with an intent to build social network of farmers and dedicated to agriculture where farmers could join the network, engage themselves, and connect with the other stakeholders to discuss about their needs and requirements. We build farmers’ profile at our end to work with different stakeholders, Agri brands, and companies to give a targeted community access to market and market research survey. I see many Agri input companies in the last 5 years with changed trends, and companies want to have their online presence felt post covid. So seed companies and agro chemical companies are creating their own YouTube channel with lot of informative and useful content for the farmers. Also there is a business opportunity for Krishify as it can go deeper into the data of farmers as to who are buying their products, their actual customers distributors, and retailers. But the information of the farmers wo are actually buying and using their products in the soil has always remained elusive. This hinders the growth of companies that have already their presence in certain areas, and those who want to sell their products. The concept of remarketing is missing, which is a potential loss for the companies. They have to depend on other for pushing their product.
But if the companies had a clear idea of who their real customers are, the farmers who bought their product, it is useful for remarketing, crop selling, and also research activities where they can do market survey to get the feedback on the product. We have different kinds of Agri input companies, mainly dealing in market linkage forward and backwards. Some companies started farm level aggregation concept where there was a myth that farmers sell to local aggregators and transporters, but here is where they get fully exploited. But many of them reverted to some other model, but the major problem was aggregation on the ground due to limited information. For example, if there is a demand for capsicum in the market, we should know who are the farmers growing it in the vicinity of the market, if it is ready for harvest, but there is a gap in the information, and so it becomes highly inefficient as there was operational and logistical challenges. So the logistics should be built to collect from every farm, but the problems of grading, sorting, packing, and the financials with the farmers were there. Price may be higher than what the local aggregator would offer because of the trust. When we try to do the business directly with the farmer, we have to pay a premium for that which is not sustainable in the business in the short term perspective but may be yes in the long term.
Lot of companies started innovating two types of further intervention. One was to just aggregate everything at the farm level. But this may not happen because all commodities have value chain as they are sourced, treated, packed and procured, and then reach the market to get maximum outcome. So it was felt to focus on specific commodities where we can go deep and understand each interaction in the value chain, the importance of each value chain. The other part was to build a model where we do not have to worry about the farmers’ level because it is highly fragmented. So we go one level ahead with local aggregators who have built their learning and educated themselves doing this for decades. So they deal with the farmers, company deals with aggregators, and build supply chain.
Input, output, and agritech companies on input side created market places, the market is huge but fragmented with some fundamental problems. One is timely and right advisory, a personalised one. Each farmer is different, and we cannot standardise the advisory. The farmers cannot work based on the advisory given on the TV because it is personalised to the crop and not to the farmers. Farmers definitely need help and access to quality input, financial help, and forward linkage. So lot of agritech companies have come up giving advisory with intent to sell input, but again the challenge is there is demand but fulfilment becomes problematic. In the market, we do not store products or have inventory, but we work with sellers and get the demand fulfilled with the help of aggregators. When the farmers live in remote areas, the farmer willing to purchase online may not have easy retail access in their areas. So sending products to these areas is difficult. Whoever follows eCommerce model is successful because of the high returns. There is a cost of return involved apart from the forward logistics cost, which makes the model quite unsustainable. Agritech is working around input phase, and farmers need somebody to answer their questions, validate that this is the right product for their farm. Somebody who is qualified enough has to give the advisory because the situation may worsen, and they see low margins. The way the whole distribution model is build since decades, there is a set factor. The company gives product to distributors, wholesalers, and retailers with minimal margin. In branded highbred seeds the margin is minimal. So the company becomes stockist first, buy product from the other company, store them, but because of the low margin, the business takes a hit further. The model that finally evolved was to have a store, franchise, partners, through these we can reach out to the farmers. The margin will be slightly thicker, and we do not have to invest on the last logistics as we have hyper local presence. By adding our own brands into categories which have higher margins, some companies set up their business in this way.
Financial issue is the next issue as most of the farmers do not have credit history, so any bank or lender has difficulty in deciding whether to give loan to the farmer or not, if yes, how much to give, how much risk is involved, and the rate of interest. Few innovations have helped happened in this direction. But we can accompany those who understands the farmers much deeper in considering their profile and cropping pattern, assets, and ownership, cashflow, and the company that can work closely with a bank to give credit access to the farmers. I see digital intervention get opportunities here. FMCG brands want to trace everything till the farm level, and the input from the digital intervention can give the input to help the agritech companies to move forward.
Krishify is a social network and a data company. We select month or year range, select the date, the products, and we get the cluster of farmers wo are interested in using these products. We can track the data of the farmers at district or gram panchayat level. We have thousands of farmers working with us. We can find out the area and what people are looking for, the pattern or sowing and harvesting, and tell the farmers about the behaviour in each district in the last few seasons. We can get the details on the availability of seeds, agro chemicals, and even disease outbreak. We can warn the farmers in advance and suggest the strategies. We can also suggest market activity where the products will be in demand in a particular season and help the farmers plan distribution. We can personalise the content for the farmers and use the data to help companies for better strategies and market research.
What are some of the key digital technologies that have shown promise in transforming the Agri sector?
Awareness is the key factor. Unless farmers are aware of what is new happening and the new technologies or new type of farming, know about successful cases, it is difficult. If some farmer tried a new method in paddy cultivation and achieved higher yield, the digital tools help us to make farmers aware of this practice. So they can start practising these methods. They can extrapolate the example in the event of advisory seeing some early signs of a disease outbreak in a particular area, the farmers in those areas will be aware that they will also face the same issue. Even before it happens in their farmland, we send notification to all the farmers to be cautious about the disease and get prepared to face the situation. This is the preventive measure we can take to prevent the farm getting affected. All the areas can have digital intervention involved.
How do digital interventions help in innovating crop yield and overall Agri productivity? Can you tell us some success stories where digital solutions have significantly impacted small scale farmers in developing countries?
Personalised advisory for the farmers help them. Data on the per acre yield in Maharashtra sugarcane farmers being less than the yield achieved by the farmers in Uttar Pradesh helps farmers becoming aware of what the farmers in Uttar Pradesh do to improve the yield. There could be better farming practices and personal advisory. Farmers in Maharashtra generally get the consultation and advisory solutions from crop experts and consultants and digital companies. This is a massive improvement in digital innovation, and the tools can give personal advisory to the farmers to increase the overall yield and profitability. There are lot of such cases. If we look at countries like China, the yield has improved over the years in certain crops though initially the farm size was similar to what Indian farmers have. Their productivity has increased massively. In countries like South Asian countries like Vietnam, some of the crops have increased yield. In India there are multiple pockets where there are improvements especially in horticulture. So we see that such innovations have happened with better input, products, seed, and digital intervention helps the farmers with better, faster, and personalised advisory.
What are the major challenges the farmers may encounter when adopting digital interventions, and how can they be mitigated?
Farmers may often be new to digital technologies and even to a smart phone. It is a challenge for them to understand and use the digital solutions to the maximum potential. Companies are working on this segment. At Krishify, with a large network, we know the challenges and are working on simplifying the process. We should simplify the overall app experience so that the farmers are able to use, consume it irrespective of the regions they are from, profile, and digital literacy, or their language. We are trying to bypass the barriers as the personal advisory or digital information was not personalised and was cumbersome to not only farmers but to all. We are trying to simplify it so that the farmers can subscribe and get the information. Trust is next challenge. Though digitally things are easy to share, we do not know how trustworthy they are. So we have some methods to know the credibility of the person sharing the information on the platform so that we know if it is a reliable source of information and follow it or ignore it.
What measures are taken to ensure digital intervention are accessible to farmers from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds? How do you see the role of AI and Machine Learning shaping the future of agriculture?
Smartphone intervention is a revolutionary intervention. Whatever be the socioeconomic strata of the people, they can access Krishify and get the information. The others cannot be reached by any company. So we are building features to enable non-smart phone holders also to benefit with some of the features. Our experts panel will reach out to them in case of any concern and address them. Through some IVR based solutions, farmers can ask questions and get replies. We use AI at multiple levels with videos from creators, experts and brands, so automatic tagging happens which is not manually possible. Understanding the users and their requirements and to decide if the content would be relevant to them will be possible by AI and machine learning. We create personalised information on everything. We can personalise their pack of practices and advisory solutions for ever single farmer with data available. Even if the farmer does not have credit access or history in the past, based on the AI data, we can create a database and find out if he deserves a loan or not. There are lot of other things like quality of produce, right price, and touchpoints at every level.
How does IoT device contribute to development of smart farming practices? What would be the crucial area for further research and development in the field of digital intervention in the field of agriculture in future?
We develop the platform and rely on our parameters to do that, and we help them reach out the right set of farmers and information. Any kind of vision around sustainability, agriculture, regenerative farming using digital intervention to support will be needed. Farmers should be made aware of regenerative farming, support it with right kind of advisory and market linkages with right price. Sustainable farming is what the ecosystem should work toward with digital intervention to move forward.
Mr. Rajesh Ranjan
Founder
Krishify
Gurugram, Haryana
Email: rajesh@krishify.com
Phone: 9535990524