
A technology-based startup, CropIn Agtech based in Banglore startup founded in 2010, by Krishna Kumar, founder and CEO of the Farm Management-Monitoring-Traceability business solution. The startup is helping the Agribusinesses by providing services through SaaS in the homeland and in foreign countries too. It is facilitating the agriculture technology to the farmers and also facilitating the large companies of the industry. The startup is enabling farmers with the latest technology like communicating and informing through the web and mobile phones also include Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Business Intelligence for agriculture.
The startup, CropIn Agtech is facilitating the farmland to be a part of the technology and accessing the farmers with the best online agricultural practices globally. Also helping the crops to suffice the global quality standards by measuring the crops standard. The technology now carries out into effect in 1.8 million acres of farms impacting 5 lakh of farmers and the process is accessed by the large firms like ITCBSE.
CropIn Agtech: A Saviour of Farmers & Agribusiness:
The idea arose in 2010 when Karnataka’s agrarian crisis took place. Local farmers of the state were facing an extent problems of finance, climatic vagaries, soil degradation, pest infestation and diseases, operational inefficiencies to non-predictability of the production. He wanted to prevent the crisis and farmer suicides also. So, Krishna Kumar decided to use the technology in a way to resolve the problem of the 1.2 billion population of India. In Aug 2010, he left his job of Software Engineer from General Electric Co. (GE) in Bangalore and there CropIn Technology Solutions Pvt. Ltd was born.
A farming technology to resolve the various pain points of the several farmers in the country. Many of the industries used technology solutions, and software successfully to improve their data, efficiency and in taking better decisions; and attained success, such as FMCG, Automobiles, Aviation etc.
“In one word, we want to make every farm and every farmer traceable. Imagine buying an apple from a store and when you scan the apple, you get information on which plot, which area, when the apple was first planted, what pesticides were used on it, etc. That’s what our technology does,” said Krishna Kumar.
CropIn Agtech helps the farms in occurring more efficiency and effectiveness in business and to respond the challenges successfully stepping towards the future opportunities with the assistance of data science and technology. The farm digitization is a saviour for the growers/farmers in the country striving for the better production, harvesting. In today’s epoch, all the technology made it possible and a little bit easy to access with their smartphones with the help of cloud computing, mobile phones and big data analytics.
“From the moment a farmer decides to plant or sow his seeds, it is mapped immediately onto our platform,” says Krishna Kumar.
Funding & Investments of CropIn Agtech:
Right from the beginning, they dragged several big market players to invest in the startup. CropIn Agtech always used the technology best in providing services and to maximise the crop production with a visible mapping of the farm, from the moment the farmer sow seeds. CropIn Agtech marked a tremendous impact in the country in past seven years. Now CropIn Agtech is expecting a better agri-space by the use of technology with the help of new government policies.
Funding:
CropIn Agtech has raised total funding of $3,610,000 from five round of investments.
Date |
Rounds |
Investors |
Amount |
Lead Investors |
25 Sep, 2017 |
Funding |
2 |
— |
BeeNext |
1 April, 2016 |
Series A |
4 |
$2,850,000 |
Sophia APS |
1 April, 2014 |
Angel |
2 |
$520,000 |
Invested Development |
1 April, 2013 |
Angel |
1 |
$200,000 |
— |
10 Sep, 2011 |
Seed |
1 |
$40,000 |
— |
Investors :
- Ankur Capital
- BeeNext
- Sophia APS
- Invested Development
- Seeders
- BSP Fund LLC
CropIn Agtechs’ Achievements and Innovations:
To date, CropIn Agtech expanded in the 12 countries — India, Japan, Mozambique, Tanzania, Vietnam, Portugal, Kenya, Nepal, Uganda, Ethiopia, Myanmar and in the Philippines. Now planning to cover the further areas soon like Africa, Europe and Southeast Asia. With the mission to ‘Increase per acre value’ and vision ‘To make every farm traceable’, CropIn Agtech is working on the latest technologies — mobile apps, data analytics, cloud computing and connecting all the stakeholders of agriculture at a single platform.
In less than a decade of working CropIn Agtech is operating more than 70+ different species of crops covering plantations, spices, coffee, fruits and vegetables, tea, seeds production, field crops, cotton, etc. Furthermore, the startup has access over million acres farm across different countries and connecting technology to 5 million farmers. The Startup is honoured for innovation with the various awards and recognition. Currently, the startup is working with McCain Foods, Louis Dreyfus Company, Philip Morris, Atlantic Sun Farms, Sulphur Mills, Big Basket, Mahindra, Mars, IDH, Marico, Tata, Godfrey Phillips, McCain, IFB Agro, ITC, ICICI Lombard, Welspun, and World Bank.
“That proved to be a turning point for me—I didn’t want to be the guy who sits and develops something that eventually might or might not go to the market. That day I decided I wanted to be the guy who had complete control over his own innovation,” says Krishna Kumar.
CropIn Techs’ Competitors:
CropIn Techs competitors in the market are Source Trace, FarmLogs, Airwood, Decisive Farming, Jumio, Cropio, Dairy.com, The Climate Corporation, FarmLogic, Card.io, Danal, Agrivi and etc.
“We believe the potential is huge and we with our expansive experience and cutting-edge products we are in a vantage point to address these issues well,” says Krishna Kumar.
Accomplishments of CropIn Agtech:
The startup CropIn Technologies has developed its five products catering the agribusiness at the distinct level are SmartFarm, SmartRisk, mWarehouse, SmartSales, and AcreSquare.
SmartFarm: For the management solution enabling the digitisations of the farms, empowering decision making with the help of data analytics, and providing clarity of the production and process of the farms. Also assuring the supervision of standard package of practices, compliance and certifications and pest and crop health management.
SmartRisk: It is an intelligence solution for agri-business leveraging agri-alternate data and gives risk mitigation and forecasting for credit risk assessment and loan recovery assistance. A machine learning algorithm providing insights on weather data of plot and regional level.
mWarehouse: It is enabling the farm to fork traceability and compliance, quality control and flexible inventory management for processing and export companies. A complete pack house of solutions.
SmartSales: It ensures end-to-end performance management of sales team, using CRM and input channel management solutions to predict and improve the sales.
AcreSquare: It is a mobile application helping company to interact with farmers directly, educate them, content sharing, providing consultation. Enabling companies to build the trust and faith on farmers by extending the power of technology to them.
“The idea was to do something for a sector that desperately needs technology. We have been talking about ICT (information and communications technology) for the agriculture sector for three decades now, but there hasn’t been any meaningful technological breakthrough,” says Krishna Kumar.
Future Expectations of CropIn Agtech:
“With this fundraise we are funding our investments in technology, data science and predictive technologies to detect and predict crops in different regions,” said Krishna Kumar, CEO at CropIn.
Presently working in 12 countries with 120 customer base clients and 2.1 million acres of farm fully digitised. Currently, a team of 90 people working with 20 agri-consultants focusing on expanding the business in other countries. In this new-age of technologies, CropIn Agtech definitely brings a change, but it will take a huge endeavour in spreading education and awareness. That potential has the startup, CropIn Technologies to bring a huge change and revolution in the traditional method of cultivation.
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