TCS developed mKRISHI (m = mobile; krishi = agriculture) to offer personalized and integrated services to farmers.
TCS mKRISHI platform combines multiple technologies such as cellular network, camera phone, automatic weather station, Soil and Crop sensor technologies to bring vital information regarding local weather, fertilizer requirement based on soil conditions, pest control, and current grain prices in local markets in a rich content format to the farmer’s handset. TCS mKRISHI is connecting various Eco partners ( farmer's stakeholders ) to farmers directly or through village entrepreneur.
User Interface in the local language allows farmers to send a query by either keying in digits or selecting a menu item. For those with limited literacy, we have developed an IVR technology on the handset and provided voice features in our software to transport voice messages between the farmer and the expert. For the experts who may not be familiar with typing messages in Indian languages, we have developed a Font rendering engine for Indian languages which takes inputs as phonetic strings and displays it in Roman script. We have also provided a digital pen support for handwritten queries. mKRISHI also enables farmers to send crop images to the experts which would enable the experts to understand the problem faced by the farmer more clearly.
TCS is partnering with stakeholders such as agri input companies, poultry & dairy companies, agriculture universities, NGOs, rural banks and bringing them together on the mKRISHI platform, enabling farmers to meet his requirements in an integrated fashion. Since the platform is capable of providing location specific and time specific information on demand of agri inputs and supply of certain produce, we expect the supply chain in agriculture sector would improve significantly.
To the best of our knowledge, this is the first serious attempt to “integrate” various technologies and farmer’s stakeholders and provide a crop, soil and location specific personalized advice to the farmers in local language on a mobile phone. Instead of an expert traveling to each village, the environment “travels” to the expert along with the farmer’s query.
With TCS mKRISHI, Eco patner's IT system get connected to farmer directly which was not possible earlier. This would enable stakeholder to take notice of farmer's needs and act on them promptly.
The project was started with couple of intentions in mind, namely (1) Can ICT help farmers to increase yield, reduce cost, get him better prices and improve farming efficiency. (2) IT companies are active in various sectors of economy, except agriculture. This sector contributes about 22% to India’s GDP and hence there must be business opportunities for IT companies to provide solutions to the farmer around whom the economy revolves. Our vision is to increase farmer’s productivity and income many fold and generate employment in rural sector by creating microenterprises using ICT. We believe we can realize our vision by achieving following objectives.
1. To give personalized advice, anytime anywhere, on a handset of the farmer in local language. 2. To bridge a gap between the farmer and the expert and other stakeholders. 3. To improve yield, reduce cost, improve efficiency and get better prices for the crop as a result of personalized advice. 4. To make precision farming affordable even to small and marginal farmers. 5. To create thousands of micro enterprises and generate wealth in villages through village entrepreneurs. 6. To generate employment opportunities for large number of agriculture graduates in rural sector 7. To address social and environmental issues while ensuring sustainability and scalability of the initiative. 8. To combine IT & Computer Science with Agriculture technology to produce unique solutions to the problems faced by the farmers.
After recent discussion with European companies, we have added two more objectives to the above list; namely (1) To introduce GAP standards, through mKRISHI platform, to farmers growing fresh fruits and vegetables. (2) To enable farmers to export fresh vegetables and fruits to all over the world through partnership with the European company.
TCS' business strategy is to be customer focused and offer a wide range of services. In conformance with TCS and TATA values which have a priority on "building the nation" as demonstrated by the ownership of the TATA companies by philathropic trusts.
mKRISHI's vision is to be a knowledge catalyst for the next agriculture revolution.
mKRISHI project was started with couple of intentions in mind, namely (1) Can ICT help farmers increase the yield, reduce cost, fetch him better prices and improve farming efficiency? (2) IT companies are active in various sectors of the economy, except agriculture. This sector contributes about 22% of India's GDP and hence there must be some business opportunities for IT companies to provide solutions to farmers around whom the economy revolves.
mKRISHI is an integration of various technologies and delivers personalized and integrated services to farmers in their local languages on a mobile phone instead of an expert travelling to each and every village to address farmers queries, the environment "travels" to the expert along with the farmers query.
mKRISHI an an innovation has has several technologies integrated in it:
Sensor Network
• Various sensors such as soil moisture, leaf wetness, soil PH and weather sensors were used to transfer the farmer’s environment to the expert. To the best of our knowledge, this is first serious attempt in India to apply sensor network technology to Agriculture.
• Our solution makes innovative use of camera in the mobile handset for providing high resolution pictures of crop images
Script Technology
• User Interface in the local language which would allow farmers to send a query by either keying in digits or selecting a menu item; thus overcoming shortcomings of an all English handset.
• For the experts who may not be familiar with typing messages in Indian languages, we have developed Font rendering engine for Indian languages which takes inputs as phonetic strings and displays it in Roman script. Also, we have provided a digital pen and tablet support for handwritten entries.
Voice Technology
• For those with limited literacy, we have developed IVR technology on the handset and also provided voice features in our software to transport voice messages between the farmer and the expert.
GIS Technology
• Dynamic data received from the farmers or sensors in the field is aggregated over villages, blocks, districts & states and displayed on Google Maps for Experts and policy makers to know the trends and take decisions.
GPS Technology
• We are using triangulation method, PIN, Mobile number and the address given at the registration time to decide the location of farmer who is making query. Triangulation method which uses the signals from nearby base stations give us latitude and longitude. Some of the high end mobile phones have GPS chip which give us location at high resolution.
Cellular Network (GPRS, CDMA )
• Wireless Cellular Network is widespread in India. Our innovation takes advantage of this infrastructure by sending data from the farms to the server. We have connected automatic weather station and sensors through wireless modem and our software to the server stationed at Mumbai data center.
Mobile Handset Technology
• We download our application over the air into a handset. Our innovation is developing application in Indian language, embed it into a handset and make it user friendly to literate, semiliterate and illiterate farmers. Also use the handset for referring to Best Practices and picture gallery of “good” and “bad” bugs in their egg and adult stages. Also, our application enables farmer to upload the farm operation data from the farm itself.
Thus, we see that ICT plays a very prominent role in the mKRISHI project.
The target groups are basically farmers and their stakeholders. Many agri input companies, rural banks, crop insurance companies, government, agriculture universities would find it easy and less costly to reach group or individual farmers. mKRISHI allows farmers to send queries in their local languages through a mobile phone and provides personal responses with advice or relevant information in these languages. It also helps literacy challenged farmers by allowing them to use the service by means of voice activated SMS. mKRISHI also enables farmers to send crop images to the experts for analysis.
PATENTS The innovation is patented nationally and internationally. The Indian patent application number is 1078/MUM/2007 and International patent application number is PCT/IN/2008/000353
AWARDS Qualcomm’s Wireless Reach GRAND PRIZE (2007) Golend Peacock Technology Innovation Award (2008) Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation Award (2008) NASSCOM’s TOP 50 Innovation of 2008 (2008)
India Innovation Initiative Award (2009) (2009) NASSCOM FOUNDATION Innovation Award (2010) BiTC - Big Tick Award, UK (2010) Aegis Alexander Graham Bell Award (2010) Best Private Initiative in Agriculture in eIndia conference 2010. (2010)
GRANTS Grant of US$100,000 from Qualcomm's wireless reach program to develop the idea of personalized services to farmers.
KEY BUSINESS DEALS mKRISHI helped Insurance Business Group to win Agriculture Insurance Project worth US$ 5 Million.
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