A Cloud Startup Wants to Be a Crystal Ball for Farmers Everywhere

Gangavalli Naga Suresh and his ancestors have been growing crops in eastern India for generations, gazing at the sky to predict weather, sifting soil through their fingers to gauge moisture, and keeping a record of yields and prices. He turned to technology four years ago to plan his farm. A service now gives him tailored advice for critical decisions, such as how much seed to sow and when to do it, based on meter readings of soil temperature and hydration content, satellite imagery of local weather patterns and artificial intelligence tools. He says technology helps him use materials and labor more precisely. My income has gone up quite a bit.

Cropin Technology Solutions is a Bangalore based company that is building a global cloud-based service for agriculture. The startup reaches 7 million farmers in 100 countries through its 250 customers, which include the governments of India and Nigeria, as well as the World Bank. Krishna Kumar, the co- founder and chief executive officer of Cropin, said that the company has raised $33 million to date. He expects the company to come close to a $500 million valuation with its next investment round, which would help Cropin on its quest to become a Wikipedia-like database for agriculture. Kumar wants to be the crystal ball that every farmer could look into and anticipate yield or pricing information.

Kumar says venture funds were reluctant to hear agriculture technology pitches when Cropin got going. Beenext of Singapore and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation joined Cropin in the last two years. More people are interested in the agtech sector. In the second quarter of this year, venture capital-backed agtech companies raised $2.5 billion in 204 deals. It's difficult to make money in agriculture, that's the challenge for startups. The agtech segment has existed for over a decade, but will be gone in the next decade.

Market conditions are helping agtech backers make their case, as supply chain snarls, climate change and Russia's invasion of Ukraine worsens a food crisis. By using technology, the agriculture industry could add $500 billion to the global gross domestic product by the year 2030.

Cropin tends to fix on a segment of the industry, a particular crop or a small geography. Microsoft has been piloting a business-to-business data hub called Azure FarmBeats. Cropin hired a Microsoft veteran to be its chief technology officer.

Kumar founded Cropin to help India's debt-ridden growers after he was distraught by a number of suicides among them. Most phones were on slow 2G networks, and the bulk of the farmers and even lender used pen and paper back then. Kumar and his friend from middle school decided to tackle the problem of poor information flow in the industry. Cropin was collecting and processing data on 100 crops in dozens of countries by the year 2016 and estimating when crops would be past the point of being salvaged in California.

Millions of tea, coffee and cocoa growers around the world are being helped by a model that Cropin and Starbucks use to predict disease attacks on cocoa farms in South America. Corn growers in Brazil and cucumber growers in the US are helped by the company by predicting irrigation needs and pest attacks. Cropin has helped map total wheat acres, predict annual production and forecast required imports, and Nigeria has contracted the startup for another two years. In India, which runs the world's largest farm insurance program covering 140 million farmers, Cropin's data is used in a central region to arrive at an accurate yield benchmark. A quarter of the country will be covered by the company in the next five years.

It is difficult to connect directly with farmers who can't afford technology or don't have the time or confidence to use it. Over 85% of the world's farmers are small-holders working less than 4 acres. To reach them, Cropin markets its technology to companies that sell seeds,fertilizers, or produce. Syngenta pays for the Cropin service and gives it to the growers, who are currently advised by Cropin representatives rather than an app.

Paul Miller, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research Inc., says that growers stung by microlenders in the past may be hesitant to sign up for agtech offerings. Farmers need to insist on retaining ownership of their data in order to enter these relationships. He says they should keep expectations in check because agriculture data models are hard to adjust for specific geology.

Kumar says that Cropin has a database of over 10,000 varieties of 500 crops. He says that technology is on the agenda of every farm business to improve processes, efficiency and yield. Every mainstream investor is looking at technology.

As soon as we crush a few bugs, the robot tractor will come.