Pune based startup, Agrograde, founded by Kshitij Thakur and Rakeshkumar Barai in 2017, is tackling a critical issue in India’s agricultural sector: post harvest loss and inefficient grading processes.
By using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning, Agrograde aims to improve the marketability of fruits and vegetables, delivering greater returns to farmers and enterprises alike.
Post Harvest Losses and Quality Inconsistencies
India is one of the world’s largest producers of fruits and vegetables, but the country struggles with significant post harvest losses due to a lack of modern infrastructure and subjective, manual quality assessment methods.
Traditional sorting methods often fail to account for crucial parameters such as defects, size, and color distribution. This results in underutilized produce, lower market prices, and massive waste.
Agrograde addresses these inefficiencies by automating the quality check and sorting process with their patent pending smart machines.
These machines use AI-powered vision systems to assess the quality of fresh produce with unparalleled accuracy, identifying parameters like size, shape, color, and defects.
The automation ensures consistency, eliminating human subjectivity while improving speed and accuracy.
AI Powered Solutions for the Entire Agri-Supply Chain
Agrograde’s technology uses computer vision and machine learning algorithms, allowing for a seamless sorting and grading process in three simple steps: capturing an image, uploading it to the cloud, and receiving an instant quality report.
The system can sort multiple grades simultaneously without damaging the produce, providing immediate insights to farmers, traders, and supply chain aggregators.
The company’s flagship product, the Agrograde machine, sorts fruits and vegetables into three different grades, offering immense utility for medium to large enterprises and exporters.
This machine can process diverse commodities, tomatoes, apples, and other produce, while capturing critical data points like size distribution, color variations, and defects.
The reports generated are stored in the cloud and can be accessed via a data dashboard, enabling users to make faster, data-driven decisions.
Empowering Farmers for Better Returns
Another notable innovation is the Agrograde app, designed to empower farmers by providing a detailed quality overview of their harvests.
The app generates a quality report that helps farmers negotiate better prices with buyers and know which grade of produce will attract the best price in the market.
With direct access to enterprises and retailers, the app fosters transparency, reducing middlemen and increasing farmers’ income.
The app’s simplicity makes it accessible to farmers, who can take a picture of their produce, upload it to the cloud, and receive a quality report almost instantly.
This is especially beneficial for Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs), which can now trade across state borders, maximizing returns for their members.
Benefits to the Ecosystem: From Farmers to Enterprises
Agrograde’s products offer wide-ranging benefits across the agri-supply chain:
- For Farmers: The AI-based grading ensures faster procurement processes, no subjectivity in quality determination, and traceability, giving farmers the tools they need to market their produce better.
- For Enterprises: Agrograde helps supply chain companies maintain transparency in their procurement processes, reducing disputes and enhancing trust between farmers and buyers.
- For FPOs: The solutions help FPOs track and optimize incoming quality, allowing them to make data-driven decisions, improve marketing, and increase profitability through inter-state trade.
Market Impact and Growth
Since its founding in 2017, Agrograde has seen growing adoption of its technology across India’s agricultural sector.
As the country’s agricultural production continues to rise, Agrograde’s solutions are addressing the critical gap between farm production and consumption, optimizing the supply chain, and minimizing losses.
Their technology has the potential to increase value realization by 30% for stakeholders in the agri-supply chain.
The startup has also created a more efficient and transparent marketplace by automating processes that were once reliant on manual labor and old trade techniques.
Agrograde’s cutting-edge AI solutions are not just improving the quality assessment of fruits and vegetables; they are modernizing the entire supply chain for better, faster, and more profitable trade.
The Journey Ahead
Looking to the future, Agrograde plans to continue scaling its technology, expanding its reach to more commodities, and refining its AI models.
With a vision to revolutionize India’s agricultural infrastructure, Agrograde is making strides toward ensuring farmers get fair prices for their crops, enterprises get higher quality produce, and the country as a whole reduces waste, contributing to food security and economic sustainability.
Through innovative AI-driven solutions, Agrograde is transforming the way India’s fruits and vegetables are graded, sorted, and sold, solving one of the biggest challenges in the post-harvest agricultural supply chain.
