June 2020
Registration of Agrix
Agrix is registered, with first operational cluster in Nawada, Bihar.
Grew up in a small village in Bihar in a Teacher’s family – spending most of his time roaming around the farms.
Leaves his village as his parents move to a nearby town. Keeps visiting his village regularly on vacations.
Leaves Bihar for higher studies. Visits to his village become less and less frequent.
Graduates, joins Infosys for a brief time. Joins NIT Rourkela for an MTech in Signal & Image Processing. Works on image-based plant phenomics.
Completes his MTech, starts working as a senior research fellow. Works on identifying and cataloging endangered plant species of the Himalayan region based on phone camera images.
Joins IIT Delhi to pursue his Ph.D.
Visited his village after a gap of 8 years. It was a life changing experience as it was not the same thriving society that he left behind. It was deserted as younger generations didn’t find farming attractive and had moved to cities in search of better opportunities. It was shocking to see that about 30% of the plots were left uncultivated.
Perturbed by the thought that with farmers getting old and young generation not interested in farming, who will be growing our food, starts thinking about ideas to employ tech to improve the lives of small farmers.
Meets Saurav and Vivek in IIT Delhi who shared a similar story and belonged to farming families in Bihar. Started discussing the farmer’s issues together.
Starts a pilot project by cultivating a 1-acre plot to understand the pain points of farmers. Had to wait for 12 days to get a tractor hired, couldn’t get the seed variety suggested by the expert.
Defended his Ph.D. Harvests the crops. Studies market linkage prospects.
Agrix is registered, with first operational cluster in Nawada, Bihar.