Despite establishing themselves successfully in India's own Silicon Valley of India as product engineers, something felt incomplete for Shailendra Tiwari and Ananda Varma. The two who met while working for a HR tech startup, hailed from Varanasi and shared a similar background in farming. Far from home, in the high-stakes city of Bangalore, the two would often get away on weekends to greener pastures and learn more about farming practices outside the city.

"Farming is like meditation. It gives me a lot of peace," explains Tiwari. Weekend getaways led Varma and Tiwari to understand farming practices down south, especially in horticulture. The duo decided to cultivate capsicum and hired some consultants to provide counsel on the proper steps to cultivate capsicum. Tiwari says, "I realised a lot of farmers and consultants resort to guess work and estimations. It led me and Ananda to think - what if we could develop a platform that could provide accurate information to farmers about their crop, weather conditions, soil etc and allow them to make informed decisions about their crops? Would this lead to better control over their production yields and profits?"

Being men of science, Tiwari and Varma were convinced that precision agriculture would be the future. This led to the duo starting AI & IoT-driven agritech startup Fasal in 2018. More than half of India is actively employed in agriculture, and the sector is the primary source of livelihood for 58% of the population. Yet, most of farming practices are driven by archaic methods and estimations about weather, soil, and irrigation needs. Tiwari says, "Farmers are responsible for feeding us. But are they fully equipped with data and insights on their own profession that guides them to make informed decisions? This is the gap we are trying to fill."

Fasal is a combination of hardware, software and data collection methods that come together to deliver insights to a farmer through an app in a language that he understands. A network of low-cost sensors installed across a farm continuously gathers information about the crop's vital parameters and uploads it on the Fasal cloud platform. AI algorithms analyse this data, and inbuilt prediction engines can deduce ideal growth conditions, water requirements, pesticide levels, weather patterns in the upcoming days or weeks and sends these as actionable insights or recommendations to the farmer on an app. "Cultivating a crop is a science - one has to understand the physiology, phytology, etymology of a crop to really extract the highest level of benefits it can offer. We offer insights at the plant level to the farmer after churning a lot of data, so the work of the farmer is minimised. All he needs is to check his app for a to-do list for his farm on a given day and execute those tasks."

Fasal largely works with horticulture crops, and is working with more than 3,000 farmers in states like Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra. One of the reasons Tiwari and Varma chose to work with horticulture farmers was the levels of awareness of horticulture farmers towards technology applications, as well as the scale of impact of tech solutions on kinds of crops. Tiwari explains, "Depending on the kind of crop one cultivates, there are stark differences in yield, productivity and accordingly costs. For instance, consider a grape farm. In one acre of land, a farmer can make up to Rs. 8 to 10 lakh per season. A chilli farmer spends around Rs.45-60,000 per acre per season and can earn between Rs. 4 - Rs. 5 lakhs. A tomato farmer spends upto Rs. 70,000 on cultivating an acre for which he can make around Rs. 5 lakhs. On the contrary, a paddy farmer would have to spend Rs. 10,000 to 15,000 on an acre and would be able to earn no more than Rs. 45,000 for this. A horticulture farmer makes in one season what a paddy farmer would make in four or five seasons, and this is contingent on a host of factors like the soil, weather, pest infestations etc. Fasal's end to end solution is a one-time investment for a farmer. Tiwari says, "One of the toughest parts of our solution suite to develop were the sensors. We worked on a series of prototypes to ensure our product is low-cost and yet highly effective." One of the hallmarks of Fasal is to be able to pre-empt a difficulty or challenge with a crop. Tiwari explains, "A common challenge seen with a grape farm is downy mildew. It is fast spreading and can destroy a crop in a matter of hours. Using our sensors, it is possible to detect and preempt the possibility of this disease, prompting the farmer to take up a corrective course of action like spraying pesticide within the ideal time window. These insights are very hard to procure without precision technology, and can save a farmer lakhs."

Hariom Mukati is a chilli farmer in southern Madhya Pradesh. He has deployed Fasal devices in his chilli farms, and has reported significant results in just five months. He used to irrigate his field every alternate day after TP for 15 mins. With harvesting going on now, he irrigates the farm every day or alternate day with about 700 ml per plant. Now, he averages and maintained soil moisture at 30-35 CB. With nearly 50% water savings, Mukati has reported lesser root-borne disease and colour rot. In addition, fruit borer and mite infestation has been mitigated due to adequate amounts of spraying. As a result, the quality of crops has improved and has led his market value going by significantly. The team says Fasal helps save nearly 25% of irrigation costs, nearly 20% in pest management and an almost 10% improvement in yield quality.

Tiwari adds, “Today, while workforces are pivoting to a remote work model, we’re enabling the same for our farmers too. With the app on his phone, the farmer can deploy labourers to execute these tasks and ensure the crop upkeep continues.”The startup has raised funds of $1.6 million from Omnivore and Wavemaker, and are keen to cater to more horticulture crops.