Farmlogics is a platform that works towards providing solutions to Agricultural businesses. The Kochi based company aims to contribute to the growth of agricultural businesses in the State. The team wishes to share the knowledge of technology and make agribusinesses and it’s stakeholders achieve success.
Give a brief info about Farmlogics?
Farmlogics is an agritech company based out of cochin, catering software solutions to Agribusinesses working directly with small and marginal farmers, to sell agri inputs, offering financial assistance, giving training to achieve sustainability and to procure agriculture outputs. Incorporated in 2016, we are completing our 4th year of operations and have a team size of 20+. We have customer presence in 6 countries across three continents.
What problem does Farmlogics solve as a startup in the Agritech Space?
The main challenge for organizations working with thousands of farmers scattered across multiplelocations with little or no /internet connectivity is that they have little control over the activities taking place on the field. Through a variety of carefully designed mobile and cloud solutions with a farmer centric approach we capture the key information from the fields and make it immediately available for the stakeholders for immediate action.
Your startup is based out of Cochin.How much do you think the place has influenced the growth of your company?
We are Kochiites. there is always an emotional connect with Kochi. Besides that, the cost advantages of being in a tier 2 city, connectivity, availability of talent resource pool and low attrition rates were the main reasons behind opting for Kochi.
Operating from Kochi has its disadvantages too. Indian startup system is mainly concentrated in tier 1 cities in terms of funding. But we have used the limited/lack of access to funding to our advantage, by focusing more on paying customers.This approach helped us in focusing more on our products and revenue generation rather than pleasing VC’s.
Agriculture is a highly unorganized sector in India.What were the challenges you faced to start and run this venture?
We have no customers in India as of now. Agriculture is largely unorganized in developing countries across the globe. The very reason for our existence is the unorganized nature of agriculture. We are helping the stakeholders in the Agriculture sectors to streamline their operations in such an environment.
Do you have competitors. How are your solution/products unique and different from your competitors?
Yes. We have competition from India and abroad. Some of our competitors are in the business for some time.
Founders of FarmLogics comes with 15 to 20 years of experience in building and implementing software solutions for agribusinesses across the globe. Our “on the ground” experience helped us in understanding the problems better and to design solutions accordingly. We have worked, lived and experienced in large Agric plantations across the globe which helped us speak same the language with customers. Our board has Technology entrepreneurs from India and US which enabled us to go the extra mile in terms of cutting edge technology.
We share the cost advantage of operating from Kochi with our customers as well.
Agritech is growing at a phenomenal rate. How do you evaluate this change towards using technology in the agriculture industry?
Although farming is the most important business in the world, it’s always lagging behind when it comes to embracing technology. There is a statistic everyone rightly points out nowadays, “We need to feed 9.6 billion people by 2050”. Now the governments and the private sectors across the world are coming together and working towards that goal. It’s exciting to see tech giants like Google, Microsoft, Intel are investing on addressing agriculture specific issues. The good thing is that everybody wants to implement the latest technologies in the agriculture sector. We see the trend in last 3-4 years. We believe the next decade would completely transform the agriculture sector in terms of technology adoption.
Considering the space, you are in have you been benefitted by any subsidies/incentives from Central or State Government?
No.
Have you raised funding? If yes, then we would like to know the details. If no then please tell us if you’re looking to raise?
We are self-funded and followed the lean startup model. Once the MVP was ready, we started approaching the customers. Luckily we were able to onboard customers from second year and we are operationally profitable since year 2. We understand the importance of funding and is open to partner with VC’s who share the same vision. But we are not in a hurry.
What are the future plans for Farmlogics. What is the future you envision for the company in the next five years?
We are expanding our operations in Kenya in the second quarter of 2020 to serve our customers better and to boost our marketing. We are planning to expand our customer base.We want to become one of the top 5 agritech companies in India by 2025 and we will be serving the farmers directly through our solutions.
Tell us about your team and how did you meet each other? What expertise did each one of them bring to the table?
We are three co-founders.We were colleagues who have known each other for around 15 years. We all have technology background and worked in the agriculture domain.
Arun handles the strategic and financial affairs of Farmlogics. Froid is in charge of Operations and Sales. Bineesh with his rich experience in AI and datascience looks at the technology and R&D side.
Know a great startup story or want to share your own? Write to us at keralainsider.com@gmail.com and we will get back to you. For more updates follow Kerala Insider on Facebook.