BlacBook Thought Leader Speaker Series on Technology and Agriculture

On 12th June 2021, the 6th semester BBA, B.com and BCA students of Dayananda Sagar Business Academy took part in the BlacBook Thought Leader Speaker Series on Technology and Agriculture which was held at 11 am on the zoom platform.

The host introduced the speaker Mr. Rishabh Choudhary, co-founder and CTO at BharatRohan who has also been listed in the Forbes 30 under 30 India and Asia. He is an experienced co-founder with a demonstrated history of working in the farming industry. He earned his Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) in Aeronautical Engineering from BBDNITM, Lucknow along with Mr. Amandeep Panwar, Founder and CEO of BharatRohan.

BharatRohan Airbone Innovations Private Limited is a knowledge company that mitigates the risks in agriculture by providing an integrated solution for diagnostics of fields and crops with an extraordinary in-depth understanding of land as well as crops by using unique UAV/drone-based hyperspectral remote sensing and Artificial Intelligence. The company has been conferred the Award for Best Agri Startup for Embracing Farm prosperity by FICCI. 

Mr. Rishabh Choudhary shared with us how his interest in agriculture developed when he used to visit the nearby field to experiment with their prototype drones and other projects during his graduation. Witnessing the problems faced by the farmers and finding out that they relied on primitive knowledge passed on by their ancestors to them, they wanted to help them out and started brainstorming for possible solutions. After their graduation, they used the technology they were specialized in to solve those problems.

He then shared his experience of convincing the farmers to adopt the technology-oriented services they provided. He recalled how their initial services functioned through advising their customer on phone calls, SMS, handouts in about 6 villages and how they gradually extended their customer base through the word of mouth. He also stressed out how identifying progressive farmers with large landholdings helped them in subscribing more farmers in the villages.

He talked about their business model and how they minimize the cost with mass subscriptions for the company as well as farmers especially those with small landholdings.  He then talked about the services and the benefits they offer to their customers and how they have been successful in maximizing the yield as well as the profits. He also talked about the services they offered to different companies such as chemicals manufacturers who manufacture fertilizers, pesticides in providing data to study the efficiency of their products. He also added how they help farmers to sell their crops and huge procures to buy the required crops assuring the quality.

He then talked in detail about how their technology works referring to some examples. He expressed his views on the Indian farmers’ readiness to adopt agri-tech and the role of the government in promoting it. He also recollected his experience of how connectivity hindered them in a few rural areas to provide the service and how they overcame these kinds of problems. The audience posted their questions for which the speaker elaborately answered with which the session came to an end.