A Kashmir based agritech Artificial Intelligence (AI) startup, Orchardly is a one stop solution to multiple problems faced by farmers and growers in the production of apples. The startup aim to revitalize the horticulture sector of Jammu and Kashmir.
It is India’s first horticulture platform focused on apples that has been started by Ehsan Quddusi, Izhan Javeed and Uzair Javeed, the three partners of the startup who come from different education backgrounds. The purpose is to reach out to apple farmers via a mobile application with the help of AI and internet and to provide them a plan of action to follow for various glitches.
The startup others solutions to orchard-specific, crop specific, crop-stage-specific, and topology-specific problems to boost the apple industry of J&K. The application has friendly user interface which provides real time weather alerts and forecasts, disease predictions, soil health, pesticide and fertigation advisories.
The idea came to Ehsan who is from technology background and is associated with apple orchards. In 2019, he got an idea that his family orchards should be shifted to high density farming. Once the orchard was setup, he realized that the post-installation knowledge for new-age growers is lacking in the valley. He approached his friend Uzair, an agronomist, for orchard consultation regarding various issues and daily activities. Eventually he realized that there is a scope and potential for tech intervention to address these issues so that the whole consultation is available in farmers’ pocket in the form of a mobile app. He discussed the idea with Uzair and another friend, Izhan, who is a supply chain specialist and they felt the same. This is how the idea brought the trio together to contribute to the field of apple production and they started working in 2021. It took them almost a year in developing the idea and finally the app was launched for grower community in March 2022.
“Our goal is sustainable farming and we want our growers to adopt to sustainable farming practices. Also, the idea is to attract the younger generation and make it easier for them so that they take up these practices as educated people in foreign countries are very much involved in farming activities,” said Ehsan Izhan said, “We believe that practices like modern high density farming are part of a package where knowledge is an important aspect and we are focused on fi lling this gap. Our aim is to increase farmer productivity and income with ease of technology.”
With the Orchardly mobile application, a farmer registers and makes a profile. Certain details are asked like location, types of crops etc. In the account, a farmer can add information related to multiple orchards in different locations and having different varieties of apples.
“We take all the details from the farmer, the type of tree, age of tree, number of trees, the variety and quality of trees. These details help us to make the advisories and alerts for the farmers. To encourage hassle-free service, we don’t charge anything or put any ads in the app,” he said.
Also, basic soil tests are offered to the farmers. For this, multiple soil testing labs are set up across Kashmir where farmers deposit the soil sample in the lab and get the results on the app only.
Ehsan said, “Soil results are provided within a few days as compared to anywhere. Everything starts with soil so if you have good soil, you can do wonders with it.” For providing alerts of weather forecasts to growers, Orchardly works on the micro-climatic area, monitoring weather over a small area. Dividing Kashmir valley into 39 zones based on weather patterns, topology of different areas, they have deployed automatic weather stations both physical and virtual to monitor the weather in these small areas.
“These stations send the periodic data about different weather parameters like temperature, humidity, rainfall and wind to our servers. Once they come to our servers, they are sent to the growers in the form of alerts. We give them weather forecasts for seven days so that they plan accordingly. If a farmer in Srinagar has an orchard in Shopian, he will get alerts around Shopian only,” he said.
He further said that every disease in the apples or the pests depends upon the weather. “We also do pest predictions. We study the life cycles of the pests and ask the growers to act accordingly. We ask them to go for timely preventive spray. We also issue fertigation advisories for them related to nutrient for trees. We also provide information related to irrigation. We monitor the moisture in the soil and if we feel that the moisture is low, we send them an alert that they should go for irrigation again. This saves a lot of water and encourages need based irrigation. This also restricts the flow of pests in the environment.” The farmers are also recommended the products like sprays, fertilizers, fertigation and pest control as per their soil. He said that there is a need to increase the production of apples in Kashmir by adopting scientifi c based modern techniques. “In Kashmir, production of apples is around 20 tons per hectare, while the world production is 40-45 tons so there is potential for us to thrive in this sector,” he said.
Talking about maximum residue limit (MRL) which are the maximum legal level of concentration of pesticides or feed additives hat a country will accept on the surfaces of food products, he said that here MRL levels of our apples are high and the levels can be maintained by adopting to need based usage of pesticides and other sprays. Till now, more than 5500 farmers are associated with the startup within a span of 5 months. “We have a team of agronomists who every now and then come up with new ideas. We are increasing our team with the growing demands,” he said.
On the application, there is a section for farmer-agronomist interaction, called Orchardly Advice where growers can upload the picture of the affected area of their orchard and seek gronomist’s intervention. “A grower can take pictures of a stem, leaf or fruit which they find is not normal. We ask him few questions and then we send him a reply according to his problem,” he explained.
Also, for the farmers who have no access to smart phones or don’t know how to access an application, a free helpline number is given to interact with the team. “The systems will also improve at the back end. In the future we have more accurate things and more advisories. Also in the next session, we can shift this advisory section to AI where replies or responses to the farmers will be AI based,” he added. On the app, there is a separate module called Orchardly Mandi where the price alerts of the different varieties of apples in major mandis across India are updated on a daily basis for the farmers. Orchardly was selected among 14 other startups from across the globe to showcase their startup under sustainable innovations in Elevate VII pitching session at Expo 2020, Dubai.
Recently, in collaboration with Bayer, a multinational company with core competencies in the life science fields of healthcare and agriculture, the brand is setting almost 200 farmer experience zones called BLF centers. These centers will be run by educated young boys and girls called agripreneurs to provide agri inputs and other consultancy services to farmers. Currently they have set up two centers, one in Shopian and other in Pulwama. Within the next few years, they are planning to set up 200 such centers.
In the next phase, marketing will also be provided to them. Next month, along with one Government delegation, the brand is visiting Spain as the only exhibitors from Kashmir to exhibit their startup.“In next session, we are also launching e-commerce for agriculture where we will have tools, sprays and agricultural products. Apart from recommending growers what to use, we will suggest the products too,” he said. The founders are exploring the fi eld of horticulture from experimenting with drones to biological control of pests. He said, “The usage of drones will minimize the use of pesticides and have more efficacy in the process.
Next year, we are coming with biological control of pests in which we have tied with, Koppert, one of the world’s largest companies for biological control of pests and diseases. In this process, one insect consumes the pest. We are getting more biological aspects into the fi eld which will be sustainable. Many innovative things are in the pipeline.”
To bring transparency in the whole supply chain, they have developed a product with the name Tracely to trace the details of the apples. “When a consumer will buy fruit, it will come with a QR code and it will be scanned to get the details of the fruit including the kind of fertilizers used, supplying place, packaging and marketing in order to maintain the transparency in the supply chain.
We are currently doing it for apple boxes but we want to apply it on single apples so we are working more on it,” he added. In a few days, they are going to launch one more product called Orchardly Procure.
“We will be now procuring the production from farmers and they will get instant payments. We will offer them better prices and maximize their profits. This will be a hassle-free and very transparent process,” he said.
The setback they face is the novelty of an idea. The challenge of acceptance is also there. “The trust has to be gained and it will take time. The people who are with us are very happy. The acceptance level is increasing day by day and we have been getting a lot of success stories,” he said.
