While shrinking land sizes are at the heart of smallholder poverty, both independent analyses and our experience in working with smallholder farmers over the years confirms that there are a wide range of variables that would allow not only significantly greater smallholder productivity, but also growth in incomes that could exceed productivity increases.
The key factors that we have identified that are withholding the growth of smallholder incomes – and often, that are endangering the sustainability of our food system and therefore our food security are the following:
- lack of smallholder awareness of better crop (mix) choices and sustainable, high yield farming practices;
- lack of access to high quality inputs, credit, and insurance markets;
- confusion about the products currently on the market;
- lack of trust in new solutions;
- low literacy levels and uneven access to digital communication technologies.
In summary, nine in ten farmers, need tools to farm but they do not know what to buy. They need money to buy goods, but they do not have access to formal credit profiles. They need to know what to grow that will fetch better prices, but the information type and delivery remains inhibitive.
We build and manage portfolios of smallholder farmers
Farmex is a farmer-centric, crop-agnostic SaaS Solution combining data-driven insights on farming, markets, and finance to boost farmer yield and income.
Next Gen Smart Farming
Farmex algorithms allow smallholders to do precision agriculture and actively manage their ROI, on the smallest plot of land, anywhere in the world.
Full Stack & Scalable
Farmex is a fully integrated soil-to-shelf solution that blends into existing agricultural ecosystems for sustainable food supply chains.
Human-Centered Tech
Farmex was co-designed with smallholders to address their daily challenges while ensuring all farmers have access to our technology.
Farmex is an elegantly simple, lightweight smartphone app at its core, it is a series of algorithms on the cutting edge of agricultural technology, powered by the cloud.
Recent evidence showcase the following impact:
- Increase production diversity i.e., digital information enables farmers to cultivate additional crops that they have not grown before
- Increase input intensity by 15-20%
- Crop productivity is increased by around 15%
- The degree of crop commercialization is up by 5-7 percentage points
- Crop income by 25-29%.
Our impact evidence and innovation credibility has been covered globally.
Our Smart Farming Engine knows all about farmers’ soils, the inputs and the practices they employ, the weather conditions they endure, and the yields they receive. We turn this data into actionable insights that our partners can use to offer products and services that respond to on the ground realities, and better serve smallholders’ needs.
FIX INPUT
- Crop science companies currently have to seek out, partner with, and assign dedicated personnel to a farming community if they are to understand how their products perform in real life.
- By combining microclimate data, farmers’ input use history, and data on the inventories of farming communities, we can predict shortages, and ensure that the needed products are available at the right time. A win for both farmers and suppliers.
- We can supply them granular data for a fraction of the cost, from not one, but all the farming communities that order their inputs from Farmex
FIX FINANCE
- By combining microclimate data, farmers’ transaction history, eKYC information, we can provide finance and credit companies with all the information they need to qualify loans and mitigate risks.
FIX TRADE
- We enable buyers to plan your sourcing ahead of time. Farmex helps farmers schedule harvests according to their timetable, estimate yield, monitor events that will affect harvest cycles, trigger recommendations;
- We keep track of inputs and farming practices on every square-feet of land, when you use Farmex, you know exactly what you are buying. We guarantee sustainable methods and healthy food for everyone;
- We provide end-to-end traceability, where you can verify the source of your food.
FIX IMPACT
- We use these insights to inform decision making of governments and philanthropies helping them deliver better results for rural communities.
Blue Number provides a unique digital identity to each farmer, farmer cooperative and other stakeholders transacting with the farmers. Blue # will provide digital traceability and identity to the products, people and processes.
Earth Analytics/SARMAP provides spatial data, including satellite-based crop monitoring and remote sensing for digital soil maps. The partnership will augment the climate-based advisory that eKutir provides to the farmers.
Technical partnership with Microsoft will enhance technological Innovation, digital operations, data visualization, machine learning and augmenting Artificial Intelligence.
Our Story
eKutir is India’s first certified B Corp. Ever since its inception in 2009, its goal has been to extend novel, technology-driven opportunities to people at the “bottom of the pyramid,” and to enable impoverished communities to develop sustainably. It has not only created a first of its kind smart farming platform for smallholders, but has developed operational models which enabled the technology to benefit even secluded communities and illiterate farmers.
eKutir has also started numerous initiatives which strengthened rural-urban linkages, and yielded improved nutrition and health outcomes in both villages and cities. Wherever eKutir’s models have been adapted, the participation of women in the formal economy has increased substantially. eKutir’s combination of social and technological innovation has proven to be both sustainable and replicable in a wide variety of local contexts.
We are grateful to be featured by reputed international media.
Our Team
Suvankar Mishra
CEO, Co-Founder
Suvankar Mishra’s career has combined an engineering background with a long-time focus on the future of food. He is an entrepreneur with a decade of experience at the crossroads of social business and technology services. He was a part of a FinTech start-up in India for over two years. Taking a leap of faith right after graduation, Suvankar garnered the key learnings of working in rural communities through his stint with the first start-up. Today, the start-up has extended financial services to rural communities across India, impacting over two million lives.
Co-founding eKutir, Suvankar was drawn by the sheer reinforcement of how data and digital can simplify agricultural knowledge into actionable information. It took him many years to lead the pivot of the solution and map the new future of eKutir. Having worked in every country eKutir has deployed its solution, Suvankar will lead the company into the future with a focus on product development, technology augmentation, new markets and initiatives.
Suvankar is an Executive alumnus of Stanford, Harvard and University of Pennsylvania, USA. He is an engineer from BITS Pilani, India. He has also featured as a TEDx Speaker and an RSA fellow in the past.
Lavanya Thomas
Chief Commercial Officer, Co-Founder
Lavanya Thomas is an EY professional with a strategic mindset and over 10 years of experience in delivering large scale digital transformations for corporates across the US and Asia. She has great experience in driving top line market growth, as well as streamlining bottom line operations for Fortune 500 companies. Lavanya has spearheaded multimillion dollar, digital and commercial transformations, designed operational effectiveness plans, built out business cases and executed complex programs while building talented cross functional teams in the process.
Lavanya has a masters from Harvard University and an MBA from Cardiff, Wales. She is also an accredited investor at the HBS angels club and mentors early stage start-ups across their growth trajectory.
Soumya Sankalp Mahapatra
Head, Marketing and Communication
Soumya Sankalp Mahapatra is a marketing professional with a strategic mindset that has conceptualized and delivered successful marketing strategies and execution in the International Markets like US, Australia, Africa, and Dubai. Soumya has a varied experience across multiple markets covering both Product and Service Industries, which allowed him to accurately devise plans that drive engagement which appeals directly and personally to the consumers.
Soumya has a Masters in Marketing from Queens University, an MBA from O.P. Jindal University and a Bachelors in Technology from IIIT Bhubaneswar.
