Innovator Spotlight: Credible

Credible is a Mumbai-based agritech start-up. It has developed short term (forecast horizon of 14 to 30 days) commodity price prediction models that can be used by multiple players across the value chain.

For farmers it is an information service that helps in selecting the right mandi for selling their produce. The prices for commodities regularly vary across different mandis (even within the same district). The mandi selection becomes crucial when the cost of transportation of the produce is also factored in. The same metrics apply to large scale commodity procurement where organizations need to optimize their logistics. So far Credible has developed models for soybean, gram, red lentils and mustard seeds. A model for chicken prices has also been created together with a large-scale poultry cooperative. While testing the model we demonstrated a significant value creation for all the producer-members of the cooperative.

The utility of the models lies in their scalability. Once trained, the models need minimum intervention to deploy them and provide predictions across any mandi in India. We believe in keeping our products light and easily integrated with other services. The Indian agritech scene is going through a rapid transformation, yet the ground to be covered is vast and without collaboration we won’t be able to deliver holistic solutions to the end-users. Our API-first policy reflects this belief. Our vision is to enable scenarios where any third party can build further on these APIs (for example price predictions) to create new services. We are strong believers in open-data and believe that the government is best placed to provide for it. Sure, it’s a work in progress when it comes to data quality, but this will only improve further with an increasing (thus more scrutiny) user base. Credible is already working closely with government entities to identify weak links in the data collection process and proposing cost effective ways to negate them.

The ThinkAg platform has played a significant catalyst role for us. The platform provides us the space to showcase our solutions to established players. The members of the platform bring in a well-diversified wealth of knowledge ranging from domain experts to policy influencers. We are excited to say that we are in the process of starting a pilot with one of the participants. We look forward to more interactions in the future and contributing towards the growth of the platform.

Credible was founded a year ago and the team comprises primarily of data scientists who love creating high impact products. It had previously won the Mumbai Fintech special jury award and recently been a part of the 1stcohort of the Gastrotope farm to fork accelerator program. The founding member, Vikram Sarbajna had been previously employed with Rabobank in The Netherlands. He was part of the management team responsible for the digital transformation of commercial lending.