Krishfy, a Gurugram-based Agtech company platform, is attempting to put machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI), and the Android system to the best possible use for farmers across the country by providing a one-stop solution to help them improve their financial situation.
Krishify, terming itself as “Facebook for Farmers,” has grown by 5x in the previous six months and now has 5.5 million farmers using its platform.
Two Main Functions:
“This platform puts farmers at the center, allowing them to engage with other farmers, retailers, agricultural scientists, and agri-experts.” According to Avinash Kumar, co-founder of Krishify, “the platform provides two key functions: information exchange and marketplace facilitation.”
Farmers share their agricultural expertise and best practices with one another. They also discuss and receive answers to difficulties and questions about crop development and disease from their peers. In the same way, if an agricultural scientist conducts research, the results and information are shared on the platform.
He added, “Farmers even swap mandi (agri-market terminal) rates or weather-related information.” Farmers can use Krishify's marketplace to buy and sell crops, cattle, and machinery amongst themselves.
This online marketplace, Kumar said, helps sellers to create online shops for their products and connect them with the buyers. However, quality assurance and payments are done offline.
Tech Backup:
The Agtech platform's growth has been aided by Amazon Web Services (AWS), which manages its services and serverless architecture, including Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Services (EKS) and Amazon Simple Notification Service (ASNS) (SNS). "The support has enabled our platform to scale up to meet demand in a short period of time while maintaining the same costs," said Taranjeet S, Krishify's Head of Engineering.
Krishify, which was launched in 2019 to create a niche network for farmers to solve a variety of problems, is currently focused on the Hindi-speaking states on the Android platform.
“Our platform is used by farmers in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, and Gujarat,” said Manish Agarwal, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Krishify.
Krishify's most recent expansion phase has been driven by innovative customer offerings powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning. “By leveraging solutions such as Amazon SageMaker, Krishify is able to provide a more personalized experience, improve fraud detection, enhance computer vision, detect natural language processing, and build a better network for farmers,” said the company's CTO.
Customer Retention
AWS has assisted Krishify with its solutions such as Amazon SageMaker to improve fraud detection, quality checks using AI and ML models, and disease detection in crops, in addition to physical verification.
"Our vision is to build a community and ecosystem for the country's farmers and agricultural professionals." "The goal is to build context-driven models and content in other Indian languages as the user base expands," said the CTO.
When asked about Krishfy's experiences during the Covid pandemic shutdowns, Agarwal said the company assisted farmers in sourcing agricultural inputs while also bringing many solutions and produce online.
Regarding the startup's challenges, Kumar stated that as Internet penetration improves in rural areas, farmers are beginning to take advantage of cutting-edge technology. "Bandwidth is an issue, but it is improving," he said.
Agarwal said the startup has targeted to rope in 10 million users by next year by further expanding its footprint.
