Like most tech professionals in Bangalore, Sriram Chitlur too harboured dreams of owning and tending to a farm. But that's easier said than done. Farmlands in Karnataka, like in most other Indian states, are not easy to manage. They require labour, farm equipment, farm supplements and round-the-clock monitoring. Chitlur realised that the capex and opex costs of running an individual farm are too high, yet there were so many people like him who really wanted to own & till a farmland, and practice sustainable living. 

A chance visit to the Karnataka Soaps & Detergent factory by Chitlur led him to discover that the state government had liberalised sandalwood cultivation. As he gathered more information about farming, Chitlur and cofounder Ashok J began sandalwood cultivation on a piece of land in Rayadurga in Andhra Pradesh - providing them a wealth of first-hand experience in seed planting, soil management, tracking local weather conditions and managing farm labour. 

Eventually, Chitlur and Ashok J, along with another green enthusiast Srinath Setty started Hosachiguru in 2014. The word is an amalgamation of two Kannada words - hosa (new) and chiguru (shoot), and when used together, imply "cultivation". While Chitlur and Srinath hail from predominantly IT backgrounds, Ashok is an agriculture expert, who has worked in propagating multiple types of sustainable farming technologies like hydroponics, rainwater harvesting and drip irrigation. The trio's shared passion for agriculture led them to build on a novel idea of managed farmlands - this involves buying large areas of arable farmland, and selling parts of it to buyers. However, the buyer isn't saddled with the responsibility and sky-high costs of running the farm himself. The Hosachiguru team handles all that - right from cultivating the land, managing irrigation, planting seeds and maintaining health of these crops, roping in labour and more. Currently, Hosachiguru manages 1,000+ acres of land outside Bangalore across 20 different farms. Each of these farms have unique soil conditions and cultivate different kinds of crops - so a one-size-fits-all approach isn't ideal. 

This is where technology comes in. The Hosachiguru team has deployed an intricate network of sensors across their farmlands. This network can be divided into three layers - perception, network and intelligence. The first layer involves deploying and managing a network of sensors across the land and even in the soil (upto 60 cm in depth) to collect information on soil temperature, humidity, wind speed and evaporation losses. The network layer comprises of a clutch of computers that can receive data from these sensors at low latencies and transfer the data to the cloud. The third layer is AI-based and harnesses the data coming in from the cloud, as well as data on crops, soil and weather conditions. In addition, tractors on the farm are also embedded with sensors that make route planning more organised and empirical. When aggregated and synthesised using machine learning, all this data helps the Hosachiguru agronomy team to make informed decisions about the farms, and even manage some parameters pre-emptively. The continuous feed of data and intelligence acquired over a decade of collective experience of team members has enabled the growth of an autonomous decision making system. Chitlur added, "We are now building a command centre in the headquarters in Bangalore, which is built on the data we have collected. The need for a centralised command centre fed with continuous farm data helps us make hyper contextual and hyperlocal decisions for our customers." 

During last year's lockdown, it was impossible for customers or the Hosachiguru team to make in-person visits and survey the farms. This led to the team to build a one of its kind MyFarm App that provides all the information about a crop, prevailing weather conditions and soil conditions to the customer directly. In addition, this data allows the agronomy team to execute decisions remotely.

The Union government's recent policy announcement to open up access to maps and geospatial data to private companies will be a game changer for several sectors including agriculture, and Chitlur and his team are elated about this development. "We are keen on introducing satellite imagery of our farms, and opening up data access to maps will allow us to build tech that can provide accurate insights on agricultural land, weather and water supply." The Hosachiguru team is keen on working with entities like ISRO and drone deployment companies to expand their suite of technological offerings.  

This endeavour is so much more than bringing best technology practices to a farm. It's about making sustainable farming a reality by harnessing technology. One of the biggest challenges farming in India faces is irrigation. Flood irrigation usually ends up in water wastage but farmers don't know better. Hosachiguru uses drip irrigation on the farm, as sensors provide accurate information on exactly how much water a crop needs and when the optimum time for watering is. This has helped save so much water. "Due to erratic climate changes, we usually see flash floods and the soil cannot absorb all that water in one go. This leads to needless wastage. We have built a catchment area that stores all the excess water and is judiciously used for farming whenever needed. We're also utilising the Bhungroo technique, which is an injection model to store excess rainwater underground. We're extremely proud to report that we have managed to recharge all the borewells we have had to drill to date," explains Chitlur. 

By consciously aligning with nature, Chitlur and his team are keen on making farming sustainable and scientific. A sidebar project that he hopes will take off is meaningful and strategic collaborations with the larger business and tech community. "Hosachiguru is thriving because farming is an emotion, and reminds us all of simpler and happier times. But there is a tremendous strain on the environment and natural resources, and creative collaborations leveraging technology is the need of the hour. We're very keen on working with industry leaders, agriculture experts and technology leaders who want to make a sizeable difference to the environment."