Fasal using applied AI which means ‘crop’ in Hindi is an Artificial intelligence startup, that provides data-driven, smart farming techniques that check soil type, solar exposure, and crop growth cycle. Additionally, it also offers financial management, weather predictions, pest alarms, and alerts for irrigation to help farmers.
Founded by Two Techie friends Ananda Verma, and Shailendra Tiwari, in January 2018, Fasal – using applied AI is a new-age Agri-tech startup, with IoT, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and SaaS in it.
Applied AI – Removed The Guesswork From Farming
Anand Verma, a graduate of IIIT Bengaluru, met Shailendra Tiwari while they were both working in a Bengaluru-based IT software company. Anand’s Father is a farmer from Azamgarh, U.P., Form seven decades, his family has been involved in the agriculture sector. Generally, Farmers always relied on their instincts when it came to crop growth cycles, soil minerals, weather conditions, etc. But rarely been able to avoid the risks posed by climate change and which led to the loss of their harvests to unpredictable weather patterns, degraded soil, and unrelenting pest infestations, and Anand had witnessed his father doing the same thing and losing his crop for several years because of lack of data.
Coincidentally, Ananda and his fellow techie Shailendra, both come from agricultural households, decided to solve this guesswork problem and the poor utilization of resources by Indian farmers. They started Fasal, a B2B2F startup with a ‘full-stack’ software-as-a-service platform for horticulture, that predicts the risk of disease in crops and assists farmers in tackling the issue with the help of technological advancements in Artificial Intelligence and IoT which monitor real-time parameters from the farm.
In the initial stage of Fasal – using applied AI, to check devices, Anand and Shailendra brought small farmland in Mysore, installed the devices there and on Anand’s father’s farm, and started growing fruits and vegetables, with the help of artificial intelligence, within a period of 3 months they saw a significant change in the quality of the produce and in the less use of fertilizers and water in crops.
The Indian agriculture industry is the single largest private sector in the nation, it provides livelihood to 65 to 70 percent of the total population, Even a typical drip irrigation system is 3 times more expensive than Fasal’s IoT counterparts. Indians are working day in & out to bring a change in the age-old agriculture pattern of the country there are many AI-based technologies coming up in the country, read how Turning Reality Into AI Automation is finally here – all thanks to Black Eye Technologies.
Grow More, Grow Better
Their first achievement was, an invite from the largest vineyard in India called Grover Zampa, they installed MVP there, and within the period of two months with the help of early alerts from the devices they were able to maintain the necessary level of water in the root of crops and in the use of downy mildew disease sprays to save the quality of the grapes in zampa.
Fasal uses 88 technologies for its website and is the first to deliver real-time data collected by Artificial intelligence devices to farmers in their own languages. Farmers use this data from the Fasal’s devices and plan their irrigation, pest, and disease management, Even in the driest areas like Maharashtra, Farmers have seen an increase in their profitability and are saving money on water, energy, and pesticides because of the use of fasal-using applied AI.
Each device of Fasal- using applied AI lasts for four to five years. They operate on a pay-as-you-go model and have a nominal monthly subscription fee, and depending on farmers’ crop requirements they also customized devices for them. Because of their crop-based approach, they have increased crop yields by 30-40 percent, reduce pests, and diseases in crops by 50-60 percent, and by cutting down water usage by 30 percent, farmers saved more than 9 billion litres of water from irrigation and input costs comes down by 50 percent.
In 2021 they have partnered with IMD’s Meteorological Department to do research on weather forecast models, they give weather predictions to a total of 23 IMD radar sites which last for four to five years, and with the help of sensor arrays, they install the devices in less than 15 minutes to five and is far less expensive and simple for farmers to become more climate-smart.
Fasal-using applied AI is in its seed round and has raised a total of $9.9M in investment in six rounds of funding and has a total of 17 investors on board. In 2021, they received their most recent funding from Omnivore and Genting Ventures, and are presently operating in the states of Maharashtra, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, and Madhya Pradesh and are planning to expand across India and enter into markets of Southeast Asia, and are presently focusing on horticultural crops quality while reducing chemical residues in grapes, pomegranates, mango, citrus, tea, coffee, and chilli. Read more inspiring stories with Mad4India.
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