Cognizant today announced that it has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Garuda Aerospace, one of India's leading drone startups, to power its drones with advanced digital capabilities and bring innovative solutions at scale for enterprises aiming to achieve greater agility, productivity, and overall outcomes. "We are excited to collaborate with Garuda Aerospace, combine our deep industry knowledge with capabilities such as advanced data analytics, real-time insights and software development to elevate drone-based solutions and new use cases for enterprises across sectors," said Achal Kataria, Vice President and India Country Head, Cognizant. "Drone services are one of the fastest growing technology segments with the potential to provide extraordinary value to industries such as agriculture, manufacturing, energy and utilities, retail and logistics," Kataria added. Cognizant and Garuda Aerospace are collectively set to bring a plethora of end-to-end drone-based management and monitoring offerings for businesses across sectors. For the agriculture sector, a new offering provides intelligent water and soil management, crop spraying, and aerial planting, among others.

A major mass of India's population is still dependent on and practicing agriculture as their primary source of income. And this sector contributes around 15 per cent to the national GDP of the country. With the advancement of time and technology, there has been a trend of introducing new methodologies by tech entrepreneurs in the sector. Farmers are provided with modern technologies for better results for their income. Farming in India for a prolonged period of time has been based manually.

Agriculture is the backbone of the Indian economy. The government has acknowledged the importance and potential of technology in the agriculture sector. It is promising to note that the budget prioritised agritech, especially with the push on DeepTech like artificial intelligence and geospatial systems and focus on drone shakti. Experts and leaders of the agriculture sector feel that the budgetary provisions and proposals will go a long way towards making the farming industry sustainable and profitable. Ajay Kakra, Leader, Food and Agriculture, PwC India said, "The focus on startups and agritech in the budget will be helpful for the development of a digital ecosystem and technology inclusion in the agri sector. However, most industry aspirations remain unmet."

AgNext Technologies, a leading agritech company, in association with NAFED and Arunachal Pradesh Agriculture Marketing Board (APAMB) is using Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based rapid quality assessment of organic kiwi from the eastern Himalayan state. Through its quality monitoring platform'Qualix', AgNext has also enabled deep-tech based comprehensive traceability. Using QR code mapping, the end-consumers can trace all the steps in the supply chain down to the origin. These organic kiwis were launched in New Delhi last week by APAMB along with the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (NAFED) as the marketing partner, under the'One District One Product' scheme. Speaking on this partnership, Taranjeet Singh Bhamra, CEO & Founder, AgNext said, "It is an honour to work with NAFED on India's first AI-based initiative to bring complete quality and traceability management solutions for Arunachal's renowned kiwi trade. To date, over 6000 kgs of kiwi have been assessed and moved through our'Qualix' platform, with proven benefits for the farmers, NAFED and the end-consumers. The impact of facilitating quality-based and traceability-enabled trade for kiwis will not only improve domestic demand but also help in boosting export potential of the fruit."

The Government of India plans to migrate towards technology-based yield estimation from the conventional Crop Cutting Experiment (CCE) based yield estimation approach. Towards this, few pilot studies have been initiated by taking various government and private agencies onboard. During Kharif 2019, pilot studies were conducted through 12 agencies in 64 districts of 15 states for nine crops envisaging innovative technologies such as high-resolution satellite data (optical and microwave), unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), advanced multi-parameter crop models, mobile applications for field data collection, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), sensor networks, internet of things (IoT), field-based digital photographs, handheld instruments and scientifically designed sampling plans. These approaches were validated in Rabi 2019-20 in 15 blocks of six states. The pilot studies were scaled up to 100 districts with the help of seven agencies for paddy crop in Kharif – 2020, and for paddy and wheat in the Rabi season of 2020-21 in 100 districts of 13 states.

Intello Labs, a global artificial intelligence (AI) powered quality assaying start-up, formally announced the launch of their Praman business today, which has been in stealth mode over the past few months. Praman is ground-breaking agriculture produce trade exchange platform, with integrated quality assessment. Praman is building a much-needed quality layer between farmers and traders to accelerate and accomplish the digital transformation of Indian agriculture. Within a few months since its launch, Praman has already achieved a monthly gross transaction value (GTV) of US$ 40 million. Praman has successfully re-engineered auctions and trade through AI-based quality assessment, making them data-driven and digital.

California, US-based, SRI International today announced that its insurtech venture spinout, Wingsure, is expanding its artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented reality (AR) capabilities to deliver instant access to personalised insurance products for underserved small farmers and communities worldwide. The initial implementation will focus on India where 50 per cent of households are dependent on agriculture for their living. Many are located in remote rural locations without access to financial services and are unable to insure against crop failure or other unexpected events. Wingsure's mobile platform provides previously inaccessible services to this enormous market, where 600 million people are agri dependent. Wingsure is an insurtech platform that revolutionises how small farmers and rural customers leverage insurance and financial products to transform their lives and livelihood.

Agritech in India has seen a skyrocketing growth with numerous startups emerging with new technologies and advanced methods such as data analytics, machine learning and satellite imaging, among others to cater to the needs of Indian farmers and maximise their output. India with 118.7 million farmer households, accounting for more than half of the population is heavily dependent on agriculture as a primary source of income. But Indian agriculture is plagued by several problems both man made and natural such as; unavailability of seeds, small and fragmented land-holdings, problems with irrigation due to uncertain monsoon, shortage of finance among other necessities, leaving farmers helpless and with no option but to let their produce go at dirt cheap prices. Therefore, Agritech is clearly one of the most needed industries in India and here is a list of top 9 agritech startups helping Indian farmers by providing agronomic intelligence. Started in 2016 by Nishant Vats and Tauseef Khan, Gramophone is a one-stop e-commerce platform for farmers delivering agricultural inputs in more than 10,000 villages.

Hyderabad, India: Millets have sometimes been hailed as the next quinoa but researchers collating a global database of millet products have found this ancient grain to be orchestrating a silent food revolution that could see quinoa outstripped. The "Millet Finder", launched today, discovered a surge in the use of millets, with over a thousand modern convenient products in a very wide range, across all the inhabited continents. Launched today at FoodTec Expo by the International Crops Research Institute of the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and the ICAR-Indian Institute of Millets Research (IIMR), the "Millet Finder" will help users find over 500 products across 30 countries. Another 500 products are identified and set to be included and mapped by end of the year by the Smart Food team at ICRISAT, who created the database and will continue growing it. "Unless there is a consumer driven demand and movement to diversify diets, farms cannot diversify and agriculture cannot be sustainable. By diversifying staples, we can have a major impact on diets, farms and the environment. ICRISAT strongly believes in creating awareness and helping consumers make informed choices while keeping their health and the environment in view. In that respect, millets check every box," said Dr Jacqueline d'Arros Hughes, Director General, ICRISAT, and Chair, Smart Food Executive Council.

Russia: Cognitive Agro Pilot, an autonomous AI-based driving system for farming equipment which was designed by Sber and its ecosystem member Cognitive Pilot – has succeeded in industrial use across 35 regions of Russia when reaping the 2020 harvest. From June to October 2020, over 350 New Holland, John Deere and CLAAS autonomous combines equipped with Cognitive Agro Pilot system farmed over 160,000 hectares of field and harvested more than 720,000 tonnes of crops. With the help of Cognitive Agro Pilot as many as 590,000 metric tonnes of grain crops such as wheat, soybeans, barley, oats, sorghum, buckwheat, among others, were harvested over 130,000 hectares, and some 130,000 metric tonnes of row crops and roll crops (corn, sunflower, etc.) were harvested over 30,000 hectares in Kaliningrad, Kaluga, Kursk, Belgorod, Tambov, Penza, Rostov, Tomsk, Kurgan, Krasnodar, Krasnoyarsk and Stavropol regions. Thanks to the use of Cognitive Agro Pilot, this harvesting season stakeholders were able to save – on fuel and other related materials, shorter harvesting time (machine hours), equipment depreciation, extended active use of equipment before capital expenditures, fewer human errors, optimisation of business processes, and other parameters. According to the estimates of project members, in the next three years, every 10th harvester in Russia may become autonomous.