Skip Youtube channels — Get on demand video Agriculture Advice on WhatsApp!
There are endless articles about how important agriculture is an activity for India and how we fare compared to our peers. Still for the beginners to the subject, like I was an year ago, here are 2 slides from the Bain report to summarize it.
Farming as service ( FaaS) is new ray of hope for Indian Agricultural. It offers several advantages and opportunity saw 1.7Bn USD funding in last 2 years from VC and PE firms through new age agritech firms. It has three main pillars
As an AI video company, we and our Agritech client were focused and concerned with 1st pillar. It was the needs of the 1st pillar that led the genesis of our WhatsApp app based video answer bot. This blog will cover a journey 14 months long, which explores the core need which is leading us to a revolutionary solution with GenAI.
FaaS provides facilities of farm management solutions by capturing of precise information about farm and its conditions through
Particularly data about inputs like seeds, fertilizer, associated costs, soil quality and weather parameters
This is information is all that matter to assure the right choice in pre production and a large cost component of production.
For example, a soil test in the beginning of season, tells you exactly what crop you can grow and how much fertilizers you need to put, driving the choice in pre-production and cost in production.
With 80% farmer with 1-5 acres holding, India is a small holder agriculture nation. There are 4 core challenges:
I will tell a farmer story which will put all these 4 points in context. The complexity of the story may make it seem like an edge case, but agricultural issues are normally this complex. If they are not this complex, farmer is intelligent and experience enough to take care themselves.
A farmer of paddy in UP used 40% higher dosage of DAP, as required and normal, before putting seed in the field (of course a problem which soil test can fix), hence in post nursery stage after putting required amount of DAP, the crop was not getting green. Problem is highly personalized. He called a few call centers for instant support, and they advised him to put little extra.
He did, nothing changed. Well, now starts the period of anxiety because he only has 10 days left for the next stage. He went to government agencies, the expert was on leave. He is a solo entrepreneur, so I could put myself in his shoes and could feel that for him time is everything. A field sales representative of an agri-input company visited him, regular visit, which may sound like serendipity, but is not.
He told due to higher dosage of DAP in last stage and high temperature in last few days, even extra DAP in this stage is not getting absorbed. He offered a specialized fertilizer. It worked. This happened 20KM from Lucknow. Farmers farm in hinterland.
Advisory was
There are lakhs of such stories created in India on daily basis.
There are over 50+ crop advisory apps on the Play Store, with millions of downloads. These apps promise free advice for smallholder farmers. You must have used and seen many apps which let you choose sowing date and crop and tell standard package of practices.
This free information was really good advisory 1.0. Yet average retention on these pages is less than 1%. Well imagine answering such a question through a standard package of practice. What we found that what apps and videos talked and what was discussed on the ground, has huge gap. That's why it seems digitization can offer a solution, but it is successful only partially.
Farmers are turning to YouTube videos for crop advice. These videos are created by decentrally incentivized creators with ears on ground, hence resonate with farmer needs most closely. Farming videos get insane comments, and desperate pleas like:
They also love apps like Plantix, where farmers can upload a photo and get advice. The advisory apps with social feeds and real time query resolution are really sought after. Farmer look forward to other farmer for practical implementations as agriculture involves deployment of resources scarce to them. Yet such such solution barely scratch the surface. The above validation formed the foundation of our solution. Farmers were asking for information when needed, but it should be
The Solution was beyond the human limits. This is exactly where Artificial Intelligence came as solution and saviour.
So we needed a conversational system where question can be asked instantly once problem is detected, all across in India, in 20+ languages, with videos. So we made an On demand AI video tool and AI text to video creation tool on WhatsApp.Here’s how it works:
I will delve deep into the solution in next blog post. Meanwhile you can have human assisted demo for the tool by filling this form.
But instead of giving this bot directly to the farmer, we gave it 1st to the field agents of our agritech clients. We are solving the problem of accurate information 100% of time by keeping human in the loop before going to farmer directly. Field agent, like the agent in our story, sends this video to farmer. While it solves the real time and personalized information access for the farmer, it solved a problem for Agriculture which was never possible before. Ears on the ground and data collection in real time through field agent prompts. It is not hard to see that our AI has seeded a hard nut component of 1st pillar of FaaS. Fragmented knowledge distributed on ground between farmers, market agents and government agencies. This is sheer Gold.
Well it was no brainer that field agents started asking flurry of farmer questions and generated load of updates, promotion and alert videos and started sending to their groups, channels and concerned farmers on WhatsApp. AI was truly assisting the human. They can share local product recommendations with purchase links or retailer addresses. Now, what we started to unfold, is future of agri-input commerce. I will describe it with two examples.
Here’s how this tool is creating a ripple effect:
A farmer from Samastipur, Bihar asked about blight in wheat. Al got to know about blight. Checked with other agents.
While an agents covers 400 farmers and a few villages, AI issued an alert to whole of affected area on whatsapp. It provided tailored product recommendations and preventive measures, instantly.
A potato farmer reported wilting. The agent shared a video explaining causes, along with the 3 best local solutions. It led to instant purchase.One thing players like Meesho and Zepto got right as late mover in ecommerce was experience. What they solved largely was post sale experience. This age of ecommerce will shift to pre purchase experience. With 100000+ products across 4000 Agri input companies, which are source of ~40% cost to farmer, its time to solve for discover of 3 best items which are most effective and cheapest form me. AI is bringing the age of curated commerce. Real time ground market agent intelligence plus drone/satellite intelligence will be key to deliver such experience to farmer. Such experience will drive cost lower and will ensure productivity. At BingeClip AI, we are designing such future.
What started as a solution for personalized agricultural advisory has evolved into a tool driving trust, commerce, and transformation.
We’re only scratching the surface of what’s possible. As we continue to refine and expand, the impact on agriculture—and rural livelihoods—will only grow.Our AI needs product information for as many as agri-input players to be an ultimate advisory led commerce to the end user. Take a demo of what we are building by filling this form and transform the way you are selling to farmers.