The Green Revolution was one of the most definitive moments in India's rich agricultural history. Initiated during the times India needed its food security the most, it marked a pivotal turn for agriculture sector's modernisation in 1965. Subsequently over decades, led by the Indian state of Punjab, such interventions of mechanisation, innovations in inputs and plant breeding rolled out into successful green and white revolutions and played a major role in ensuring India’s food security and rural growth.

More than half a century after, India is at the precipice of another major pivot in agriculture - a blue revolution, this time, led by a raft of new technologies like Artificial Intelligence, data analytics, spectroscopy and computer vision among others, combined onto a single platform, and led yet again, by a Punjab-based startup, AgNext.

AgNext is our Startup of the Week, and we caught up with its CEO Taranjeet Singh Bhamra on his journey as an entrepreneur. Taran graduated from IIT-Kharagpur with a degree in Agricultural and Food engineering and ensured he picks up experience in a core sector and understand firsthand the challenges at the grassroots level in agriculture. For three years, Taran oversaw food manufacturing operations and commodity procurements, before following up on an MBA from IIM Calcutta. Post his stint at IIM, Taran worked with global conglomerates in Europe and Middle East in investment banking and strategy consulting, but admits that even after acing his career there, his heart beat for transforming agriculture and that he craved to do something substantial after garnering immensely relevant work experience worldwide. In 2016, Taran came back to India along with his family and started AgNext Technologies in Chandigarh and the startup was also incubated at IIT-Kharagpur by the end of that year. In the past four years, AgNext has invested in establishing itself as a "data-driven solutions” company that aims to address quality challenges, traceability and cost optimisation using data and deploying these solutions at the intersection of buying and selling in agriculture commodity value chains. Such interventions, have the highest propensity for absorption of technology in agriculture value chains, and both buyers and sellers alike benefit by imbibing the technology. 

A Snapshot of Indian Agriculture- What Numbers Say 

Agriculture and all its allied sectors is the largest source of livelihood for India, with nearly 70% of households directly being impacted by the sector. The Food & Agriculture Organisation of the UN states that in 2017-18, total food food grain production was estimated at 275 million tonnes (MT). India is the largest producer (25% of global production), consumer (27% of world consumption) and importer (14%) of pulses in the world. The country's annual milk production was 165 MT in this period, making India the largest producer of milk, jute and pulses, and with world's second-largest cattle population 190 million (as of 2012). It is the second-largest producer of rice, wheat, sugarcane, cotton and groundnuts, as well as the second-largest fruit and vegetable producer, accounting for 10.9% and 8.6% of the world fruit and vegetable production, respectively. Research by Invest India cites that by 2020, the Indian dairy market could double to $140 bn, the Indian food & retail market could reach nearly $829 bn and the food processing could attract $33 bn in investments and generate employment for 9 million people. 

A massive market rife with opportunities in export and import exists. But there has been a history of challenges with respect to quality of food. A recent report in Food Navigator states that one in every four food samples in Haryana fail the standard food quality tests and often fall short of the optimum nutritive value. This is a rampant problem across the country, and Team AgNext realised technology could play a hugely definitive role in changing the dynamics of food quality in India.

He says, "The value addition of a commodity is defined by its quality as it moves across the supply chain into the next node. Right from production to consumption, a buyer assigns price based on quality. Several factors like loss of trade, storage, procurement, poor quality of production and adulteration affect quality and nutrition, and consequently brand value in the market. We wanted to specifically focus on technology in the midstream of agriculture, where the buyer and seller interaction takes place, using data and analytics."

Building Products For Farmers, Traders, Producers and other agriculture stakeholders - How Does This Impact Revenues & Production Standards?

From its genesis, Taran was very clear that he wanted the company to be a true innovator grounds up, and build products that are meant to address challenges pertaining to data in agriculture.

"With basic premise in place, we doggedly went on to innovate and built technologies that extracted new data streams in agriculture, and compiled them into a singular platform for insights that were needed very much by stakeholders, but were never addressed. Timing of resurgence of Artificial intelligence based technologies, and AgNext’s capability to understand, iteratively develop and package it into layers of business solutions were the key for its acceptance and success” he explains. 

Currently, AgNext has been a category innovator in itself, providing a technology platform called Qualix for rapid commodity assessment solutions across procurement, trade, production, storage and consumption of food and agri value chains. The Qualix AI engine uses spectrometry, computer vision and IoT Sensing solutions, delivered through an integrated hardware and software interface for accurate and instant quality analysis. Leveraging on this, AgNext is introducing a stream of other SaaS-based solutions on its Qualix platform which will benefit its clients for integrating more technology solutions for their benefits.

Taran says, "AgNext, in its first avatar, has innovated technologies for agribusinesses, to solve the problem of quality, which we believe accelerates transactions and build sustainability at its core. Using state of art technologies, we have created the right singular platform, through which quality for multiple commodities could be assessed in a minute (our benchmark) enabling agribusinesses to leapfrog their procurement and operations processes, optimise costs, provide traceability, sharpen and smoothen blockchains and most importantly produce excellent products of highest quality."

AI-Based Spectral Analysis - AgNext is one of the only companies to innovate and integrate portable, on field devices connected with its platform, that help in instant spectral analysis of agri commodities in the form of liquids, solids, powders, grains or leaves, pretty much covering the whole spectrum nature offers. This suite provides results using AI based algorithms for instant quality analysis of composition and contamination, farmer-wise data for quality produce, managing suppliers by lots and building business intelligence through quality maps.

AI-Based Image Analytics - AgNext has built devices which work with on-premise embedded cameras for instant quality assessment using computer vision sciences. Across India, majority of crops are assessed manually and with the naked eye, leaving room for multiple inconsistencies, manual fatigue and manipulations leading to losses across agriculture value chains. This solution removes subjectivity, digitises transactions and encompass traceability, all the while consistently providing an accuracy rate of more than 99% delivered at fractions of cost and time to stakeholders.

AI-based Sensor Analytics - AgNext pioneered the first applications for LoRA WAN based IOT applications in India, which provide quality estimations in multiple agriculture processes in spatial arrangements, like curing, food storage, warehousing and logistics. AgNext has built STQC calibrated sensors for temperature, humidity, gaseous emissions and other parameters key for various agriculture industries like curing solutions, grain silos, warehouses, food processors and storage services. These provide real-time alerts on control parameters and data analytics for actions to be taken as devised by the research institutions for better management of food quality.

The suite of Qualix solutions provide rapid quality solutions along with traceability and other SaaS-based solutions for agriculture stakeholders. With singular platform and integrated analysis of all kinds of food quality, this provides immensely critical insights to agriculture stakeholders to plan their procurement, operations, productions and quality of output across seasons.

 “Apart from what we see as direct benefits to private players, institutions and governments can benefit immensely mapping quality to geography to optimise their extension budgets and augment market linkages. Without data on the quality of output, it becomes very challenging to plan the input, which is currently the case. Deploying such technologies at every buyer-seller intersection brings insights for quality in constitution and adulteration in a geographic spread. If the governments or institutions have information on where they are obtaining produce with constitution of certain parameters, it allows them to plan their extensions and market linkages based on this data. India has several agro-climatic zones and crop geographies in India change every few hundred kilometres. Without accurate data, extension is blanket strategy and the pricing of commodities isn't adequate. This affects not only the quality of produce in the long run, but also the “incentivisation of farmers” to produce better quality and realise better price, which AgNext believes should be the core for the nation’s strategy to build sustainable agriculture practices. The entire supply chain really thrives on quality of produce, and this is where we want to make a difference with data," explains Taran. 

In addition to providing accurate data to traders and procurement agencies, Taran says this approach is also hugely helpful to a farmer. "No one is averse to technology in rural areas - this is a misconception. In fact, if there is a method to accurately inform them of crop practices, commodity quality management and such, they understand what they are doing right and wrong. Ultimately, this data affects them too. By giving them accurate information through soil health cards, to crop health cards to produce quality cards, they too are incentivised to do their jobs well."

AgNext presently focuses on verticals like beverages (tea, milk, coffee, cocoa), grains (rice, wheat, maize, barley), oilseeds (soyabean, mustard), spices (turmeric, chilli, pepper, ginger, menthol) and animal feed, and works with clients across multiple geographies in India with early inroads in global markets in Africa and Asia.

“We want 5% of the global food to move through our platform. This is our goal. And that would be a start…” says Taran

The Ground Level Impact - Case Analysis of Milk & Tea Quality Assessment 

AgNext works with a range of crops, but let's look at how exactly their solutions have helped in assessment of tea leaves & milk. 

Tea Leaf Assessment: Of late, tea export from India has suffered a setback, while demand for tea from countries like Kenya & Sri Lanka have been on the rise. Prices have seen a steady decline over time, that tea plantations are unable to oversee production costs and this has led to high losses for tea growers. Determining Fine Leaf Count (FLC) is imperative to the tea industry. AgNext deployed Qualix - a platform for rapid and accurate estimation of agri produce using hardware, software and analytics. Using AI and Image Recognition Software, AgNext was able to identify leaves from various classes coming from garden harvest as leaves, buds, Banjhi, shoots and the rest. Leaves are first dried and separated using a patented technology and then photographed with a high FPS camera. In the post-processed inverted binarised image, each component is identified and extracted separately using Artificial intelligence, and then the images are processed for FLC per industry standards. A set of final stats show how many leaf and bud configurations are in every shoot, allowing for a percentage of FLC to be displayed on the device and mobile. All this gets done at a fraction of time, gives access to more sampling for better evaluation and removes subjectivity digitising the entire procurement and payment process from there on.

Milk Assessment: Adulteration of milk is a rampant issue in India. Nearly 70% of the country's milk and its by-products have been found to have pollutants, according to the Animal Welfare Board. Some of these pollutants include palm oil, detergent, urea, caustic soda and paint, posing a major threat to the health of consumers to diseases like cancer. Through Qualix, milk can be assessed in just 30 seconds with data on composition indices like fat, SNF, Lactose and Protein, as well as contamination indices like urea, detergent, starch, vegetable oil and water paints. This is done using spectroscopy or chemical analysis to check for adulteration. 

'Continuous Innovation For Indian Agriculture Is Needed'

Recently, AgNext announced they would be starting an AI Center of Excellence at the Tea Research Association in Tocklai. Taran says this CoE will be the first of its kind for the global tea industry, which will be driven completely on analytics and technology, addressing issues like tea leaf quality and pesticide levels in tea leaves. Thanks to the flourishing relationship with the TRA, AgNext will be able to utilise the industry data to develop precise solutions and work in tandem with industry leaders to achieve these goals. 

Taran is also part of a government’s core group committee that is working towards building India's first agri-stack, with the aim of democratising access to datasets to foster more innovation among agritech startups.

"At the core, as innovators, it can be very tempting to go after multiple challenges and problem areas to shore up revenue, but our goal has always been to stay true to the building premise. We are now addressing a huge challenge in agriculture using data and analytics, and our range of work across various commodities tells us we have just scratched the surface. Technology and agriculture have to marry, and we will make this happen.”

With funding from Kalaari Capital & Omnivore, Taran is happy that his investors understand, support and augment AgNext’s vision for Indian and global agritech. With interest from countries in Africa and Asia for utilising AgNext's proprietary technologies, he hopes to have a larger international footprint in the coming months.