'Our technology is going to help Indian
agriculture the way the White Revolution helped milk production.'
IMAGE:
AgNext founder Taranjeet Singh Bhamra. Photograph: Kind courtesy Taranjeet
Singh Bhamra/Twitter
When farmers are agitating
over the way they are unfairly treated by the buyers of their produce, an
Indian agritech start up assumes significance.
The Artificial
Intelligence-based technology developed by AgNext Technologies -- founded by Taranjeet Singh Bhamra, a graduate
from IIT-Kharagpur and IIM-Calcutta -- analyses both the physical and chemical
quality of food in just 30 seconds.
This can be a game changer
when transactions take place between the grower and the buyer, as it removes
any subjectivity in the analysis of the quality of produce the farmers are
selling.
Incubated at IIT-Kharagpur
in 2016, AgNext got its first seed funding from a-IDEA National Academy of
Agriculture Research and Management, Hyderabad, in 2017. Its next series of
funding came from agritech-focused fund Omnivore and Kalaari Capital in 2018
and 2019.
In 2019, AgNext was chosen
as one of the best agritech companies in Asia by the Dutch-based Rabobank
financial services provider at events held across Singapore and Shanghai.
This was followed by the
Best Agritech Start-up of India award at the Outlook Agriculture Conclave and
Swaraj Awards 2020. This week it won the 'Most Innovative Agri Startup Award'
at the FICCI Summit & Awards for Innovations by Agri Startups.
Taranjeet Singh Bhamra,
AgNext's CEO and founder, tells Shobha
Warrier about his journey as an entrepreneur, why the technology
developed by his start-up can revolutionise Indian agriculture and why it is a
world class product.
How did your interest in
agriculture start? Are you from a family of agriculturists?
Actually, the last four
generations in my family are engineers.
My family hails from a
remote part of Punjab, Dera Baba Nanak, which means the village of Baba Nanak.
As a child, I was raised in
a very humble environment in a small town and my dream was to go through the
usual rigmarole of IITs.
I chose to study
agriculture technology at IIT-Kharagpur.
I felt not many were
interested in core engineering fields where I believed IIT engineers can
contribute significantly.
It was just a hunch then
that I had to build technology for agriculture, which manifested itself as
AgNext years later!
Was what you learnt at IIT on the expected
lines?
We learnt myriads of related
topics like food technology, soil sciences, farm machinery, etc.
I could not understand why
we were learning across the spectrum and not any a
It
was one of my professors, Dr P B S Bhadoria, who made me realise that knowledge
of all the areas is necessary to build any platform. That knowledge was
extremely helpful in shaping my outlook.
When I passed out of IIT
Kharagpur in 2002, it was not a great time in the job market.
Fortunately for me, I got a
job in the area I had studied.
How
much did the job help you learn about Indian agriculture?
A lot.
I was in charge of
procurement and food quality systems.
It was a great experience as
I could go to many remote locations to procure agricultural produce and, in
turn, learn a lot about Indian agriculture and Indian farmers.
I still remember seeing a
farmer with his small son, sitting in the sun for five days continuously to
sell his produce. When he couldn’t sell at the price he had expected, he had to
sell it significantly lower.
This incident affected me in
a big way and I decided to learn more so that I could bring technology to help
Indian agricultural needs.
IMAGE: Farmers tend to
their rice paddy crop in Andhra Pradesh. Photograph: Nita Bhalla/Reuters
When did you feel the
desire to become an entrepreneur?
Actually, 2004-2005
onwards, I wanted to become an entrepreneur. But there were no venture
capitalists or support systems for an entrepreneur who wanted do something in
the field of agriculture.
Without support, it is
impossible for a person from a middle class background to become an
entrepreneur.
So, after my MBA, I worked
abroad. I focused on saving as much as much as possible so that I could come
back and dive into entrepreneurship.
How did your journey as an
entrepreneur begin?
After I came back to India
with my wife and child, I decided to travel all around the country to get
first-hand knowledge about agriculture.
I met many farmers and
farmer leaders to understand the issues they were facing.
I realised that lack of
technology is a big problem, as is the cost of the produce and marketing it to
the right buyers.
I also visited scholars,
professors and researchers at many state agricultural universities and
understood the current state of agricultural research.
In the end, I realised that
if you wanted to solve the problems Indian agriculture faces, you must focus on
either increasing production or increasing market linkages. And, in both,
technology plays a critical part.
However, technology that
helped in decision-making was absent.
Initially, I thought of
building technology using data sciences about weather, soil, etc.
I tried my hand in that
area, but soon found that packaging solutions would require data sets that were
larger than I could fathom.
As subjectivity played a
major role in transactions that are worth billions of dollars, we focused on
continuing our research to build solutions for this extremely large problem.
Six months of a farmer's
effort is analysed subjectively in two minutes.
If the assessment of the
produce has to be done in a lab, it takes at least 10 days.
If it is done by a person,
it is subjective and it is difficult to find people who understand the nuances
of commodity qualities. Because of this, a lot of loss and fraud take place
based on quality.
Since quality analysis is
subjective, many farmers chose to sell their produce well below the market
price.
It is a fact that farmers
will not get what they deserve unless the quality of their produce is analysed
properly.
How can you analyse the
quality of a farmer’s produce using technology?
By digitising food.
Using technology, you will
be able to analyse the quality of food on the spot, in 30 seconds.
This is where our
technology comes in.
It is as simple as the
White Revolution that happened in India.
If not for the lactometer,
the White Revolution would not have happened. The lactometer showed us the fat
content in the milk, which in turn helped the milk farmers and the buyers fix
the price.
For example, milk would be
priced at a certain amount if the fat content was eight per cent and at a
different amount if the fat content was four per cent.
There was no space for
subjectivity here. The lactometer gave the actual figure and incentivised farmers
and businesses alike.
The focus shifted to
consistent quality and increased production to enable better financial gains.
And that’s how things are
to be solved in agriculture, using first principles.
IMAGE:
A sunflower farm. Kindly note the image has only been posted for
representational purposes. Photograph: Kind courtesy Navaneeth K
N/Wikimedia Commons
But it is not happening in
the agricultural sector…
It is not happening
anywhere else.
That's why AgNext's
technology solution is revolutionary.
And that's why we are
placed in the game changer category by prestigious national and international
reviews.
You said your solution is
like the lactometer used by milk farmers. How does AgNext solution analyse food
products?
A lactometer analyses milk
and, based on the analysis, the price of the milk is fixed.
Now, take tea leaves for
example.
The quality of the tea
leaves is judged by a person who spreads them on a table and makes a subjective
assessment.
At AgNext, we do a
computer-vision based analysis which replaces the human eye and the human way
of separation and collection of samples. The software analyses the sample and,
based on that, assesses the quality and price.
Similarly, we can analyse
how much protein, moisture, starch, ash, etc, is there.
We know how much curcumin
is there in turmeric, capsaicin in chilli, oil content in oilseeds.
The quality parameters,
which one never thought of analysing at a farm gate, or at a warehouse or a
factory gate, is analysed in less than two minutes.
So, what the lactometer is
doing for milk, we are doing for leaves, oil seeds, pulses, grains, spices,
cattle feed, poultry feed, aqua feed, etc.
We have packaged
multi-commodity, multi-location solutions for agribusinesses, using computer
vision and spectrometry.
This can transform any
buying and selling intersection in agricultural value chains.
I am proud to say that we
are the world leaders in spectroscopy. In fact, we are just recreating and
repackaging the technology created by Sir C V Raman years ago, the technology
for which he had won the Nobel Prize.
The spectrum of food
analysed by spectroscopy is like an MRI.
Like an MRI scan can
analyse the body, our spectroscope can analyse the content in the food in just
30 seconds.
By content, I mean
analysing chemical molecules and analysing the percentage of carbohydrates,
fat, protein, etc.
Similarly, it can detect
adulteration. For example, if there is urea or detergent in milk, our
technology can detect it in 30 seconds.
Our technology can
revolutionise all the buying and selling that happens in agriculture.
This will act as an
incentive for farmers to produce more, like it happened in the case of milk
production. This will be a game changer.
It took us four years and
several trips around the country, collecting samples of each food item, to
build this technology.
The real effort is not only
building this technology, but also perfecting the hardware, the AI in the
algorithms and validating it with clients across the nation.
Is similar kind of
technology used in the developed world because what we hear often is that the
use of technology is what is lacking in Indian agriculture?
In fact, we are getting a
lot of enquiries from all over the world.
A couple of weeks ago, we
had enquiries from a large Russian wheat exporter. They want to instantly
analyse the quality of wheat at the offshore ports within Russia.
Yes, buying and selling
food items is more structured there.
While it is done on large
scale there, here one warehouse may be used by 5,000 farmers. It is not easy to
analyse all the 5,000 samples at one go.
But nowhere in the world is
the integration of physical and chemical analysis of food done using one
solution like we are doing here.
We do the physical analysis
through AI-based computer vision and chemical analysis through spectroscopy.
The physical analysis of
wheat, for example, includes finding out how many are broken, how many are
infested, shrivelled, weevilled, etc.
Through chemical analysis,
we find out the amount of gluten, protein, etc, in wheat in 30 seconds.
So, within a minute, the
buyer will be able to assess the physical and chemical quality of food he is
going to buy.
Normally, the entire
process is manual and subjective and takes 10-15 days.
If the produce is good, the
farmer gets a better price which is an incentive to produce more.
You said it took you four
years to build the technology. From building it to finally using it in the
field, what were those four years like?
Very challenging.
What we were trying to
build was a data-based product, not a simple trading product.
We were trying to solve
something from the first principle.
When you are doing that,
you are pushed back 99 per cent of the time.
That is because there is no
precedent. So, the challenges were immense.
Pushing ourselves
continuously for four years to build something requires not only commercial
strength, but spiritual strength too.
Incidentally, the buyers of
our technology are those in between; they move food from the farmer to the
consumer.
Our customer is neither the
farmer nor the consumer, but all the agribusinesses and stakeholders in the
value chain.
Our technology is used by
businesses like Goodricke, Godrej Agrovet, ITC, Unilever, etc.
How do you expect your
technology to help Indian agriculture?
When a technology ensures
that transactions take place based on a more transparent methodology, trust
becomes a part of the trade, benefiting both the buyer and the grower.
That is why the grower is
incentivised to produce more, and the buyer gets satisfied with the quality of
trade.
We are objectifying quality
and removing subjectivity from the process of buying and selling.
Our technology is going to
help Indian agriculture the way the White Revolution helped milk production.