Four million farmers benefited From AI- BigHaat
Typically a farmer spends about 80% of his time and energy in pre-harvest activities – this includes planning for a crop, anticipating yield, structuring irrigation and pesticide, etc. If this leg isn’t planned meticulously, it could adversely affect his post-harvest outcome and consequently, revenue. Most companies in India focus largely on post-harvest and this leaves the farmer largely under-served, and frankly, short-changed. We saw an opportunity in pre-harvest farming in India and wanted to make a difference with AI.
Customarily a farmer spends about 80% of his time and energy in pre-harvest activities – this includes planning for a crop, anticipating yield, structuring irrigation and pesticide, etc. If this leg isn’t planned meticulously, it could adversely affect his post-harvest outcome and consequently, revenue. Most companies in India focus largely on post-harvest and this leaves the farmer largely under-served, and frankly, short-changed. We saw an opportunity in pre-harvest farming in India and wanted to make a difference with AI.
Founded in 2015, BigHaat leverages data science and AI to provide end-to-end crop advisory and a digital marketplace for India’s farmers. With more than 4 million farmers engaged on the platform since inception, BigHaat aims to engage with farmers through meaningful content, and a range of products that can greatly boost yield and revenue.
Building a Community for Farmers
BigHaat is also keen on building a community for farmers based on knowledge sharing and experience building. The startup has connected its farmer community with Kisan Vedika, a social media facility for farmers where they can ask their queries in regional languages and expect end-to-end guidance. These are carefully crafted by their team of Agri experts.
Impact of COVID19 on BigHaat
While COVID19 brought a fair share of hardships to farmers across India, BigHaat witnessed a sea change among the farming community towards their tech offerings. In the last year, the startup witnessed a 3x growth in revenue, a 5x increase in user engagement on the platform, and services 50% of pin codes in India. Founder Nukala his words mentioned, “In the past year, farmers realized they couldn’t easily access retailers for advisory or inputs, and turned to our platform to continue the engagement. And the most encouraging part is, that the engagement levels have only increased. We have a Monthly Active User count of 250,000 across 500,000 sessions and 1.5 million page views. Meaningful engagement with farmers, whilst providing them a digital marketplace, worked really well during COVID19.”
BigHaat plans to keep the momentum going while exploring more strategic industry partnerships – they recently collaborated with Microsoft to build next-gen solutions for India’s farmers, and hope to become a key player in Indian agritech in the next five years.
