Harnessing Innovation To Transform Communities And Lives

Authored by Archana Sahay, CSR Head, APJ, Dell Technologies

18-year-old Advaith had never imagined that he would foray into the world of entrepreneurship while he was still in school, let alone think that he would help farmers while at it! Having grown up in Hyderabad, a metropolitan city, he had limited connection with the farming community in India. This changed when he chanced upon a newspaper article that talked about the hardships and the complex challenges faced by the farmers in India.

The agrarian crisis in the country both challenged him and motivated him at the same time for he was very eager to do his bit in helping the farmers live a life that’s relatively easier. He started understanding the nuances of the agricultural complexities in the country and relentlessly pursued to solve those, which led him to establish ‘Farm Tech’, a farmer’s know-it-all personal assistant.

Advaith, along with his two friends have now become the founding members of an exciting enterprise that is set to change the landscape of farming in India. Their innovation aims to make the lives of Indian farmers simpler, easier and richer.

Farm Tech - A Farmer’s All-Knowing Personal Assistant

Farm Tech is an inventive IoT based product, when installed in a farm, aids in effectively collecting and using data to drive sound decision-making. Additionally, it comes with an application that enables the farmers to remotely monitor and control fields by enabling access to weather information and crop suggestions, while showing them live field data. This economical and innovative way provides localized information and insights to farmers based on data, helping them reduce the chances of crop failure and thereby increasing profits.

The application serves as a farmer’s all-knowing personal assistant, helping with key decisions concerning irrigation, soil type, weather forecast, to name a few. The product has received great patronage in the market for the high degree of customization it offers. The team foresees a huge market and aspires to sell their product to over 2 crores (20 million) small, medium and large-scale farmers in the next 5 years.

The Beginning of their Entrepreneurial Journey

The small school project took giant strides when this young team of 3 was selected to become a part of Student Entrepreneurship Program (SEP) initiated by Dell Technologies in collaboration with Atal Innovation Mission (AIM), NITI Aayog, Government of India.  The 10-month program aimed to introduce India’s best 6 young innovator teams to business, product development and innovation skills, transforming their ambitious prototypes into functioning, scaled go-to-market products having broader social impact.

Dell Technologies along with its implementation partner Learning Links Foundation worked closely with the young innovators and helped them refine their prototypes to the final stage of execution. The Student Entrepreneurship Program also provided the students with an opportunity to intern at Dell and be mentored by Dell employees. During the internship, students were exposed to business communication, inclusion and integration, customer-centric thinking, customer testing, feedback loop, patenting and product development through experiential learning. Dell Technologies’ team members worked closely with the students to ensure that they were being continuously guided and mentored throughout their internship period.

Farm Tech team is one of the six teams that took on the challenge of harnessing their ambitious sense of opportunism to use the resources and the support from the SEP, to make their dream of sustained social innovation come true.

The concept of innovation is an integral part of India’s development and progress, especially when it comes to harnessing its power in order to transform communities and lives. Various programs and initiatives introduced by Dell Technologies have been conceptualized to ensure that the future of our country, young students of India, imbibe the culture of innovation across education and entrepreneurship.