With Over 125 Clients Across 12 Countries, CropIn Aims to be a Global Leader in AgTech Sector

Krishna Kumar created AgTech startup, CropIn Technology in 2010, along with co-founders Kunal Prasad and Chittranjan Jena. The trio went on to develop a state of the art, innovative solutions system to address several pain points of various stakeholders in the agricultural ecosystem globally.

Today, CropIn is one of the leading AgTech companies that provide SaaS based services to agribusinesses globally, with the vision to maximize per acre value and the mission to make every farm traceable. With robust solutions that are crop and region agnostic, CropIn has digitized over 1.8 million acres of farmland, enriching the lives of 500,000 + farmers while working with 125+ clients.

From a small bootstrapped start-up that originated in a single-room office in Bangalore’s Indiranagar locality, CropIn has now reached a stage where it has raised a funding of $4 million till date.  The company has had a year-on-year revenue growth of 2X and is ambitious to achieve an even higher growth rate the coming year.

CropIn has had an exponential expansion in its human resources, with strong internal business development, technical and sales & marketing teams which collaboratively ensure that the company leads the AgTech market, with cutting-edge technologies and a strong business acumen.

BW Disrupt interacts with Krishna Kumar, Founder, CropIn Technology and spoke to him

Idea Generation

The idea of providing SaaS based services to agribusinesses came to Mr. Krishna Kumar after observing the agrarian crisis looming large on the rural areas of Karnataka in 2010 where local farmers were facing a gamut of problems ranging from non-availability of finance, climatic vagaries, soil degradation, pest infestation and diseases, operational inefficiencies, and no predictability of yield. Taking a resolution on doing his bit to prevent farmers’ suicides and avert the agrarian crisis, Kumar left his high rising career at GE and set up CropIn Technology Solutions- an agriculture technology solutions start-up that would address several pain points of millions of farmers across the country.

Features

The company harnesses cutting-edge technologies – Big Data analytics, Machine Learning , Geo-tagging & Satellite monitoring to revolutionize the agri-ecosystem. CropIn’s SaaS-based system is not a one-time intervention but a sustainable solution. The intuitive, intelligent, ever-evolving and self-learning system takes in information from various sources like weather, satellite and ground data and delivers targeted solutions to the agribusinesses.

With a robust range of products, CropIn largely works on a B2B business model, catering to agricultural businesses at different levels of the agri-ecosystem. The product portfolio includes:

• SmartFarm: An award winning robust & flexible farm management solution which enables complete digitization of farms, empowers data-driven decision-making, and provides complete visibility of people, processes and performance on the field. It ensures management of standard package of practices, adherence to compliance and certification, pest and crop health management.
• SmartRisk: An agri-business intelligence solution that leverages agri-alternate data and provides risk mitigation and forecasting for effective credit risk assessment and loan recovery assistance. Proprietary machine learning algorithm built on satellite and weather data is used to give insights at plot and region level.
• Mwarehouse: A Comprehensive solution for pack house, processing & export companies that enables Farm to fork traceability & compliance, quality control and flexible inventory management.
• SmartSales: A comprehensive CRM & input channel management solution, that helps predict and improve sales and ensures end-to end performance management of sales team
• AcreSquare: A unique farmer application that helps companies interact directly with their farmers, share content, educate them and provide consultation, thus enabling companies to extend the power of technology for their farmers and build farmer loyalty.

Differentiation

CropIn Technology is a part of the “AgTech” sector. The existing solutions are based on the traditional or classical farming practices with minimal and sometimes inefficient use of technology. The agribusiness sector is yet to adapt to advanced technologies in order to harness its true potential. There are information gaps at different levels of the agri-ecosystem, and the existing solutions do not eliminate this information asymmetry. The existing solutions work at certain levels of the ecosystem, and do not connect the entire ecosystem. We are the only comprehensive solution that offers end to end service via our products. We cater to the entire agriculture value chain which makes us unique.

Funding Status

CropIn raised a funding of $4 million till date. Our institutional investment partners are BEENEXT, Ankur Capital, BSP Fund LLC.

Monetization Model

CropIn largely works on a B2B business model, catering to agri-businesses at different levels of the agri-ecosystem. However, every sector and enterprise needs to be looked at with a unique penetration strategy. For development agencies and CSR, our model is collaborative, with farming enterprises it can be on acreage or license based costing. Additionally, we are also open to the reseller model where we get in touch with industry experts who help us reach potential audiences/forums. Apart from this, we have internal business development, sales and marketing teams which collaboratively ensure lead generation, research, customer education and potential client conversion.

Future Plans

Our target is to serve 20 million farmers (digital literacy) by 2022 and continue on our vision of making “Every Farm Traceable” with technology. We wish to go all out across to our target audience and create new market avenues globally.

With a robust range of products in our portfolio, we have so far worked with more than 125 clients across 12 countries and aim to expand our footprint in other countries and position ourselves as a global leader in agtech.

Challenges Faced

The Agtech sector in itself is in a budding stage where benefits of technology are infused to manage agricultural challenges hence currently the penetration of solution is low, as the industry in itself is picking up. Showcasing the value of this segment (AgTech) to an audience who have been into traditional agricultural practices and adoption of technology are two major challenges confronted by us.

Market Size & Opportunity 

A release from Markets and Markets pegs Smart Agriculture Market at $11.23 Billion by 2022.

The world population is expected to cross the 10 billion mark by the middle of this century. This population growth combined with urbanization will require the agricultural production to double. To succeed, we need smart solutions for fairly produced and sustainable food, feed & fibre.

CropIn’s solutions have successfully catered to agribusinesses globally, across different levels of the agri-ecosystem. Our award-winning bouquet of products enables different players in the agriculture ecosystem; farming companies, agri-input companies, governments and NGO’s, advisory organizations, financial institutions among others to work towards sustainable agri-solutions.

In India, we have seen a huge impact in the past 7 years and now with new government policies coming in we see a great impetus to use of digital technology in the agricultural space. We believe the potential is huge and with our expansive experience and cutting-edge product, we are in a vantage point to address these issues well.