WRMS’s SecuFarm app helping farmers enhance crop yield

Exclusive Interview: Mr. Anuj Kumbhat, CEO & Founder, WRMS with Mr. Nimish Gangrade, Krishak Jagat, India.

29 December 2022, New Delhi: India is home to millions of smallholder farmers, who face difficult agrarian challenges like extreme weather events, pest and disease attacks, inadequate soil nutrients, and more. These problems need modern solutions.

In an exclusive interview with WRMS’s CEO & Founder, Mr. Anuj Kumbhat, we at Krishak Jagat, India’s National Agriculture Newspaper discussed various aspects of the agriculture sector, industry perspective, and how WRMS’s exclusive smart farming models are going to bring a new perspective to the farming.

What does WRMS do in the agriculture sector? 

As an agriculture and climate risk management company, WRMS empowers farmers to overcome the most daunting agrarian challenges. Leveraging smart technology, enhances agricultural productivity, enabling farmers to practice sustainable farming and guaranteeing income through financial innovations.

Through effective use of agricultural inputs, downside risk mitigation in the event of crop loss, and adoption of sustainable farming methods with farm-level advisory, SecuFarm aids farmers in increasing production which increases their farm income.

SecuFarm works with diverse types of stakeholders and helps them achieve blockchain-powered traceability, weather and climate data analytics, produce forecasting, pest propagation modeling, AI-based pest & disease management & more.

Kindly walk us through WRMS’s unique smart-farming model.

The SecuFarm app from WRMS is a ground-breaking agri-tech solution that gives farmers farm-level production assurance by downscaling their risk using data and technology. With the most up-to-date digital technology, it reaches farmers all over India and supports them to ensure they achieve a better yield by adhering to the package of practices supplied to them in their native dialect.

SecuFarm is a complete income protection solution for farmers that also drive them towards sustainable and climate-smart farming practices.

Once farmers get enrolled with SecuFarm, their farms are geo-tagged for farm-level monitoring, they start getting customized crop management advisories, weather forecasts, irrigation advisories, etc. The app also links the farmers directly to Agri experts to resolve their queries. It also offers post-harvest market linkages to ensure they get the best prices for their yield. In case they don’t produce the assured minimum yield even after following the package of practices, the firm gives them timely compensation.

Through Ingen Technologies Private Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of WRMS, the company provides IoT-based agriculture services. For instance – accurate and real-time weather forecasting using indigenous automated weather stations helps measure parameters like temperature, humidity, rainfall, wind speed, wind direction, and solar radiation every second. Using electronic pest traps and image processing methods, remote pest monitoring is carried out. Farmers may arrange smart irrigation using automatic irrigation switches to save time, energy, and water.

What challenges do you face in convincing Indian farmers to adopt more smart farming?

Low literacy rates, traditional agricultural practices, lack of trust in adopting technology, low investment capabilities, and herd mentality are some of the challenges we face while trying to convince Indian farmers to employ smart farming approaches. Farmers are reluctant to change as a result of the risk and ambiguity involved in farming.

How WRMS ensures farm-level yield enhancement to smallholders irrespective of their farm sizes? 

SecuFarm helps farmers enhance crop yield by providing them with farm-level crop advisories. Information is gathered using IoT Sensors (AWS, AIS, APM, & ASM), satellites & drones, and GPS-enabled smartphones. This information is processed using Big Data Analysis, Machine Learning, & Image Processing techniques to provide them with real-time alerts through SecuFarm mobile application & SMS.

Please elaborate on your revenue model.

The main revenue channels are created through the below-mentioned services offered by WRMS:-

• WRMS enrolls farmers on the SecuFarm application and charges them a service fee to offer them farm-level customized advisory services.
• WRMS designs large-scale crop insurance products as a part of agriculture insurance and provides modeling solutions to global companies.
• Ingen Technologies, a fully owned subsidiary of WRMS, manufactures, supplies, and installs advantageous IoT devices for government and private sectors which add up to the major revenue stream for the company.

Also Read: Insecticides (India) launches new fungicide ‘Stunner’ for Downy Mildew disease in Grapes

(For Latest Agriculture News & Updates, follow Krishak Jagat on Google News)