Innovator Spotlight: Agricx

Saurabh Kumar & Ritesh Dhoot founded Agricx in Oct 2016. Their mission was to create low cost and easy to use products that can simplify transactions across the agriculture supply chain.  

A large percentage of 5.5 billion Tons of global agro-produce moves across the supply chain with an inefficient quality assessment process, thus causing huge wastage & value loss. The reason for the inefficient process is the unavailability of an easily accessible quality assessment tools/platform.

An illustration of the of the problem being faced by agri supply chain: nearly 640 million tons of rice is grown in Asia and passes through a complex supply chain before reaching to end consumer. A single transaction of rice requires assaying basis  10 to 16 parameters. And a large %age of these transactions uses an archaic cumbersome manual process requiring more than 30 minutes per sample.  The rice industry utilises over a million man days to test. And the accuracy of the test ranges between 60 to 80%, causing pricing inefficiency and value loss. 

The problems of the prevalent quality assessment models

• Archaic, manual & human intensive grade assessment model.

• The very small sample size is tested, sometimes 0.1% of the total "agri-output" being purchased. Thus rendering the assessment statistically inaccurate and prone to major deviation in actuality. 

• Grading & Sorting machinery are large and costly, making adoption difficult.

• Chemical tests are costly and requires 48 to 72 hours.

• Huge assaying load at the time of harvest and no method available today can handle the load.

• Mostly quality assessment & rejection is done at the point of processing where already the seller has made a significant investment in transporting the goods to the destination. (e.g. On an average Rs 70K is spent to transport a truckload of potato from Indore to processing factories in Karnataka)

Understanding the problem, at Agricx we have developed a mobile-based SAAS (SAAS expansion) solution powered by Artificial Intelligence that makes quality assessment accessible, economical, rapid, portable, & digital. Agricx ARC makes quality assessment available to growers, traders, and food processors. Thus helping reduce the inefficiencies that were being calculated in pricing mix by the stakeholders, so that the farmers, consumers and the entire stakeholder in the chain can have a better deal.

Agricx stack benefits,

1.     Click the image of the Sample and get results within 90 seconds

2.     A lot will be rejected or accepted automatically based on the threshold  (set by the enterprise admin)

3.     Complete traceability on who graded, where, when and the reason for Acceptance or Rejection.

4.     Overall grade assessment of Lot can happen under 7 minutes (Productivity Gain)

5.     Better accuracy compared to manual method. (Improved Accuracy)

6.     Increase in sample size is possible due to low processing time. Making the process statistically more accurate. 

7.     Scalable- makes managing high load easy.

8.     Least amount of training need for the user to start using the application

9.     Integrated with a built-in marketplace model.

Agricx is actively working in the Spectroscopy and Hyper spectral space. The goal is to make these technologies (Spectroscopy and Hyper spectral) affordable and portable.  This helps in increasing the repeatability of internal defects tests, save time and $, thereby ensuring quality produce at various trading points

Agricx Products

• agricxINSPECT– Mobile application to assess the quality of produce from image Artificial Intelligence-Machine Learning powered application that analyses pictures taken from a heterogenous sample and grades them based on physical characteristics like colour, shape, size, external deformities, etc.

• agricxPROCURE – Procurement solution with automated decision making and real-time payment settlement

• agricxCART – Online marketplace for simplified selling of produce

• SPECTRUM –Handheld spectrophotometer that records reflectance/absorption values and is primarily used for chemical assaying. A regular spectrophotometer is extremely large and requires samples to be transported to it, leading to delay in the transaction of produce and decreasing its shelf life. Agricx has innovated this technology and made it compact enough to fit in a human palm and fast enough to deliver near real-time results. The device is powered by an AI ecosystem.

Agricx is being recognized by various industry bodies and govt for its innovative and breakthrough product. Agricx was recently declared a winner of Ministry of Agriculture’s Agriculture Grand Challenge, Krishi Bhushan award by MP Govt, & was listed by NASSCOM as Agtech companies to watch in 2018.

Agricx was also featured in inaugural Thinkag Event. The response received from the event was fantastic. We have closed a contract with a very large global enterprise. One of the most important benefit of the platform is that in a room there are people with problems that keeps them awake at night and another set who have solutions to the problem.

About the Author

Saurabh Kumar, Founder 

Saurabh is an entrepreneur, innovator, and lifelong adventurer. He is the founder and CEO of Agricx and is dedicated to developing strategy and growing the company’s brand and market.  

He is a creative thinker, a proactive planner with expertise in strategy and execution across different business stage and size spanning two decades. Saurabh has had a successful track record of developing innovative and successful business models and delivering a great result for the stakeholders. 

Saurabh, an MBA graduate, has spent a significant part of his time in e-commerce and performance improvement space. In his earlier role, he was responsible for many innovations in e-commerce space which became base for development of the e-commerce ecosystem. 

Social Media Profiles 

Linkedin -> https://www.linkedin.com/in/psaurabh/

Twitter ->  https://twitter.com/psaurabh73