A multi-lingual smartphone AI-based application for farmers to smartly manage their crops and farms
AgSpert, an agri-tech startup, co-founded by the students of IIT Guwahati, and alumni of NIT Silchar and Dibrugarh University, Assam, has developed AgSpeak, a multi-lingual smartphone application for farmers to smartly manage their farms and remotely monitor distress activities. Developed with a goal of optimising the in-farm productivity through Artificial Intelligence (AI), this application will help the farmers in making decisions and managing farm activities by the click of a single button on their smartphone or computer. AgSpeak was launched by Prof. T. G. Sitharam, Director, IIT Guwahati.
Co-founded by Siddhartha Bora (NIT Silchar alumnus), CEO, Manik Mittal (IIT Guwahati student), COO, Akash Sharma (IIT Guwahati student), SDE, Nitin Chauhan (IIT Guwahati student), Cloud Systems Architect, Dhritiman Talukdar (NIT Silchar alumnus), SDE and Mr. Kookil Pran Goswami (Dibrugarh University alumnus), Hardware Developer, AgSpert is leading this initiative in the North-Eastern India which has untapped potential, with diverse ecosystems having agriculture as the major economic activity. The developed application is multi-lingual and has an option of Assamese as well. This feature is a first among all the agri-tech applications available in the market.
Driven by hyper local crop data coming from satellite and smart IoT devices, AgSpeak considers up to 20 local crop parameters which are key indicators of their health like temperature, rainfall, sunlight hours, soil health status, among others, to alert farmers about probable crop threats in advance and suggest best practices to tackle the incoming threat, hence optimising the resources used and maximising productivity.
The app along with the IOT hardware has been tested for the past 3 months with 500 farmers and 2 tea estates. Nearly 250 farmers have already been provided hands on training in utilizing the full potential of the app. However, the user friendliness and multilingual features of the app make it extremely easy for farmers to use and seldom require training.
The mobile app is completely free for general small farmers. There are in-app purchases like soil testing and agri-doctor consultation. Besides this, the IOT devices can be rented on monthly /yearly purposes by commercial farms to further enhance precision farm management. It has been tested with many farmers and its practical utility established.
Prof. T. G. Sitharam, Director IIT Guwahati, said, “It is a matter of immense pride that our students are working to bring out state-of-the-art technology for India’s farmers. India is a leading agricultural country with immense potential, yet 2 billion people globally did not have regular access to safe, nutritious and sufficient food in 2019 alone. To end this global starvation, we need to double agricultural productivity in the next 15 years.”
