Made in India for the world

CropIn has digitised 13 million acres of farmland across six continents and touched over 4 million farmer lives.

Monday March 01, 2021 , 3 min Read

If the late-2000s and early 2010s were about the rise of consumer internet and poster boys in ecommerce, foodtech, and mobility in India, and the mid-to-late 2010s, especially post-demonetisation, about fintech explosion, then surely this decade could be about the rise of tech-enabled agriculture.

One of the companies leading tech-enabled agriculture is CropIn.

Founded in 2010 by first-time entrepreneurs Krishna Kumar, Kunal Prasad, and Chittaranjan Jena (who left the company in 2019), the startup was launched at a time when nobody in India — or even in the developed world — was using technology in agriculture.

Ten years since its inception, CropIn has digitised 13 million acres of farmland across six continents and touched over 4 million farmer lives. Almost 60 percent of its annual revenues today come from international markets.

The Interview

The Times of India was born as The Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce in 1838 in pre-Independent India. For Times, that “ability to influence” has stayed constant even after nearly two centuries. But, the modes, means, markets, and monetisation have changed.

Staying “relevant” has been the Times Group’s defining force. It has gone from being the harbinger of socio-political change in the 19th century to an enabler of nation-building in the 20th century to a platform driving India’s journey towards a digital superpower in the 21st century.

Editor’s Pick

How a small-town boy hustled his way to the US

Ashish Garg grew up in the small town of Dehradun, in a middle-class household, where his father was a bank clerk, and mother, a homemaker. Learning the spirit of entrepreneurship and perseverance from his father, he graduated with a degree in Electronics and Instrumentation Engineering from BITS, Pilani.

In 2013, he co-founded Eltropy, a global software-as-a-service (SaaS) startup that enables businesses to connect with their customers on SMS (short messaging service) and text messaging apps. Within 18 months of launch, the startup landed a million-dollar deal.

Startup Spotlight

Hanugen Therapeutics is developing a cure for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy

India has about five lakh cases of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD), one of the various forms of muscular dystrophy that affects boys primarily, and causes progressive weakness.

Doing their bit to help find a cure for the rare genetic disease, Bengaluru-based Hanugen Therapeutics is developing innovative oligonucleotide-based therapeutics to solve the problem. The startup was founded in 2017 by Dr Arun Shastry, Ravdeep Singh Anand, and Manjula Muniraju. Read more.

Hanugen snapshot — *Illustration: YS Design*

News & Updates

For World Rare Disease Day, YourStory Mediaput forth a five-point recommendation to policymakers, decisionmakers, impact investors and other stakeholders to address some of the most urgent and pertinent challenges in India's fight against rare diseases.

Underlining the importance of collective responsibility towards water conservation, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday called for a 100-day campaign to clean up all water bodies and prepare them for rainwater harvesting before the monsoon season starts.

In the first dedicated mission of its commercial arm NSIL, the Indian Space Research Organisationon Sunday successfully launched Brazil's earth observation satellite Amazonia-1 and 18 co-passengers, including five built by students, onboard a Polar rocket from the spaceport.

Babita Rajput, hailing from a village in Madhya Pradesh, has been delighted after Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his 'Mann Ki Baat' broadcast on Sunday lauded her for reviving a dried lake near her place by channelising rainwater into it.