September 2019 – CropIn, the leading AgTech solutions provider has successfully completed 9 years in the Agtech industry. A special event was held to celebrate the 9th anniversary at the office premises of Bengaluru city, the company’s first headquarters in India. Marking the occasion, the company has laid a strong foundation to achieve new business goals, reaching target customers, expansion of new product SmartRisk in the international markets, and increase operational capacity, predictability of yield and crop health.
Elucidating on the milestones, Krishna Kumar, Founder & CEO of CropIn said: “It’s been an incredible ride. Thank you, everyone, for making it happen. I am honored and humbled for your 9 remarkable years of support, and unwavering impact that you all brought to CropIn. We are glad to celebrate the success and step into another eternal year of new opportunities in the Agtech industry with a lot more vigor and gusto.”
Today we celebrate 9 years since the start of this Agtech company, which counts over 180+ employees.
Take a delve into CropIn’s Story:
Prior to starting CropIn, Krishna Kumar was an employee at GE with an excellent career as a Software Engineer. In the face of rising hunger issues and agrarian crisis in India, he observed the excess of food wastage happening in Bengaluru. Moved by these incidents, Krishna had an urge to create something that solves the problems of farmers.
These incidents have deeply ingrained into Krishna’s mind and spurred an emotional urge to create something for a good cause of farmers.
The technologies that were already existing in the market were not significant enough to eradicate present-day agrarian problems at a larger-scale. Keeping that in mind, Krishna decided to provide a holistic solution that leaves a long-term impact on the farmers in terms of high crop yield and food security. This is where the ideation of providing a technology-based farming solution has started him thinking and that is how CropIn was born.
CropIn’s Agtech Journey:
To make this dream come true, Krishna left his career at GE in the year 2009 and ventured into an Agtech business. Krishna and his then childhood friend Kunal Prasad jointly founded CropIn with a mission to enlighten farmers/agribusinesses with an innovative solution. In the year 2010, CropIn was formed with an initial seed capital investment of $11,000, which was raised from Krishna’s closest friends and relatives.
After the seed investment stage, CropIn raised funds from big impact Venture Capitalists such as Bill & Melinda Gates Foundations Strategic Investment Funds, Chiratae Ventures, Ankur Capital, Seeders, Invested Development and BeeNext. Till today, CropIn has raised a total amount of $12 million funds through Series A and Series B funding.
From $11,000 investment company to $12 million, today CropIn has grown into a million-dollar worth company making formidable impacts in agriculture industry across local and international markets. In the journey of digitizing farming, CropIn has traveled a long way by digitally impacting 2.1 million farmers, 5.5 million acres of farmland with a rich data lake comprising of 384 crops and 3,662 crop varieties.
“Our journey of venturing into an off-beat industry Agtech was like a roller-coaster ride. We passed through many bumpy roads to grab attention from the initial set of clients. Today, we are proud to acquire nearly 207 clients and marking our presence in 48 countries across the globe,” said Kunal Prasad, COO & Co-founder of CropIn.
The Road Ahead:
“We believe that data transparency plays a significant part in enabling the digitization of farmlands. Through a next-gen Data-enabled AI and ML platform, we are looking forward to increasing the accuracy of yield predictability and crop productivity. Through the lens of AI/ML, we see a bright future of food production,” added Kunal.
Data will play a larger role in deciding the future of agriculture. CropIn is leveraging these huge data sets to build insights for farmers and businesses alike, while also making them efficient and profitable.
“CropIn intends to be a preferred partner for agribusinesses globally, providing them with cutting-edge technology solutions best suited to the needs of the current times. We are investing a lot in Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning to build cutting-edge technology that makes agriculture much more predictive and prescriptive for all of our partners and their stakeholders,” concluded Kunal
