For the Farm Equipment Sector (FES), ‘Farming As A Service’ (Faas)’ is more than just a catch-phrase. It represents the future of farming. So, it is only fitting that as the Group celebrates its 75th anniversary, Mahindra has rolled out its newest business vertical – Krish-e.

“Krish-e is an innovative business vertical conceived with the idea of ushering in a new digital age of farming,” said Hemant Sikka, President, FES, Mahindra Group. “An increase in farmers’ incomes is our core focus, and our vision is to provide technology at competitive costs, thereby enabling them to Rise.”

Expert Techniques, New Methods

Krish-e provides progressive, affordable and accessible technology-driven services to farmers, and aims to leverage the power of agronomy, mechanisation and digitisation to increase farmers’ income through digitally enabled services across the complete crop cycle.

Mahindra has made strategic investments across the globe to ensure this, tying up with Resson, a Canadian predictive analysis company; Gamaya, a Swiss hyperspectral image analytics company; and Carnot, an Indian AI-enabled Agri IoT company.

Leveraging the Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence (AI), Krish-e will benefit the farming ecosystem by bringing the power of precision farming to the farmer. And with an omni-channel approach, Krish-e will provide farmers personalised services at Krish-e centres, on their fields, through the Krish-e suite of digital apps, or through call centres to reach out to Krish-e sahayaks.

Digital Farming

Krish-e’s precision farming solutions use sensors and cameras on-site, on drones, on satellites and on farm equipment to collect soil, crop and machine data. AI algorithms transform this data into user-friendly, insight-rich field maps that enable farmers and agronomists to run variable rate farming operations.

Krish-e’s services are already helping potato, grape and sugarcane farmers reduce their costs of cultivation and to improve their yields. “Krish-e has approximately 1,000 demo-plots, where we work alongside farmers to showcase visible impact. We have impacted over one lakh farmers,” explained Ramesh Ramachandran, Senior Vice President, FES Strategy & FAAS, Mahindra Group.

Krish-e has launched three apps – Krish-e, Krish-e Rental, and Krish-e Nidaan – that offer advisory and rental services in a differentiated and farmer-focused manner. Advisory services are crop specific, and include a customised and dynamic crop calendar, real-time diagnosis, and resolution of pests and diseases.

The rental app is aimed at rental entrepreneurs with a fleet of equipment. The plug and play kit is intuitive, affordable and leverages an AI-powered IoT kit to track equipment and work performed. Already, nearly 2,000 rental entrepreneurs are using the kit to increase the efficiency and profitability of their operations.