TESTING SOIL INTELLIGENTLY: 100-250 SAMPLES A DAY
IIT Kanpur-incubated startup, AgroNxt, which had started out as an SaaS platform for farmers in 2016, launched a chemical-free, electronic soil-testing device, called Bhu-Parikshak, this year. It uses NIR spectroscopy and AI/ML to calculate six parameters in a soil sample instantly
Atypical soil testing lab in India takes as many as 7 to 30 days to test a soil sample for a farmer, according to Rajat Vardhan—the co-founder and CEO of agri-tech startup AgroNxt. But then, one probably cannot expect the 4,000-odd labs to conduct the soil tests for 140 million hectares of India’s net sown area any sooner.
This is when the smart and portable soil-testing device BhuParikshak (Hindi for soil tester) comes into the picture. No technical expertise is required for its usage, but just a smartphone to connect and electricity for charging it.
Vardhan and Ashutosh Tiwari started AgroNxt as an advisory platform for the farming community. With subsequent data-driven revisions and investment from IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) Kanpur as an equity holder, the team decided to introduce a solution for one of the biggest challenges faced by the farmers: the requirement for a rapid, affordable, and chemical-free soil testing device.
Interestingly, the researchers at IIT Kanpur were already working in this direction. Soon, a team under Prof. Jayant K. Singh came out with the Bhu-Parikshak. Vardhan says,
“The institute chose AgroNxt to commercialise the product due to our agricultural and data expertise. They believed that an IoT based electronics solution, which would be plugged into our SaaS (software as a service) platform, could reach the farming community at a large scale.”
Notably, this hardware solution is not directly intended for the farmers. Vardhan points out, “More than 80% of Indian farmers are small and marginal, who’ll not be able to afford an individual device, until and unless subsidised by government.”
The company is positioning the product for the industry—the 400,000 plus agri-input shops, sugar factories, coffee and tea plantations, and FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) companies in the agriculture supply chain, who can purchase the device and provide services to the farmers. “Microentrepreneurs, selfhelp groups, and farmer producer organisations could also onboard and, in turn, give soil testing as a service to the farmers by charging ₹ 50-100 per sample, as it has to be economically viable for these groups,” adds Vardhan.
To operate, Bhu-Parikshak needs
to be switched on and paired with a smartphone having the AgroNxt Bhu-Parikshak app via Bluetooth connection. Before use, the device needs to be calibrated and 5-8 grams of soil sample is poured into the designated sample cup for testing. The results are calculated and displayed in the application, which can then be shared with the farmers—all within two minutes.
Vardhan informs, “The device is based on the near-infrared spectroscopy, which is based on molecular overtones and combination vibrations that originate from the fundamental vibrational bands generally found in the mid-IR region.” It estimates the available forms of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium along with the clay content, cation exchange capacity, and organic carbon in the soil. The company claims that the device can test 50,000 soil samples in its lifetime, with 100-250 samples in a single day.
“As per IIT Kanpur studies, once calibrated, the device gives results with 80-96% accuracy, which is a highly acceptable figure in the soil testing market,” according to Vardhan. He adds that upon regular usage, the results keep refining because “this machine learns quickly.”
When the product was transferred to the startup as a minimum viable product, they took feedback from the industry partners—which included sugar mills, agricultural input companies, FMCG companies, a few farmers, and FPOs—to ensure that it was acceptable in the market. The final hardware costs around ₹ 100,000, inclusive of all taxes. A nominal recurring charge of ₹ 10 per soil sample sustains the huge cloud infrastructure set up for this purpose.
Vardhan says that they are tying up with established players from agri-business to reach more farmers. For example, ITC is planning to work with thousands of FPOs across the country, and AgroNxt is looking forward to closely partner with the conglomerate and “support a large base of farmers in a much quicker succession.” The startup has recently tied up with various state agricultural universities to provide farmers with prompt soil testing and customised fertilizer recommendations at scale.
Interestingly, AgroNxt is looking forward to doubling its team in the next six months. “We’d like to scale Bhu-Parikshak as a global brand for soil testing and will add more features to the product from time to time,” says Vardhan. In the upcoming year, AgroNxt plans to unveil at least two more deep-tech solutions pertaining to the agriculture field (quite literally).