Srikanth
Brief introduction about the founders
Established in the year 2004, Weather Risk Management Services (WRMS) is a pioneer in smart and sustainable farming in India. It was founded by Lt. Mr. Sonu Agarwal, Mr. Anuj Kumbhat and Dr. Ashish Agarwal as an endeavour to empower farmers in overcoming the most daunting agrarian challenges. WRMS leverages data, technology and financial innovation to help farmers enhance productivity, gain a secure income, and practice sustainable farming.
Currently, Mr. Anuj Kumbhat is chaired as CEO of the company. Under his dynamic leadership, WRMS has built and leveraged its multi – disciplinary capabilities to offer industry leading weather and agricultural risk management solutions.
Whereas, Dr. Ashish is leading the company as CTO and is responsible for building the team’s capability in Telematics, Big Data, IoT and GIS to deliver cutting-edge data driven smart farming solutions.
Few words about WRMS and its products
The SecuFarm app from WRMS is a ground-breaking agri-tech solution that gives farmers farm-level production assurance by downscaling their risk using data and technology. With the most up-to-date digital technology, it reaches farmers all over India and supports them to ensure they achieve a better yield by adhering to the package of practices supplied with them in their native dialect.
Once farmers get enrolled, their farm is geo-tagged for farm-level monitoring, they start getting customized crop management advisory, weather forecast, irrigation advisory, etc. The app also links the farmers directly to Agri experts to resolve their queries. It also offers post-harvest market linkages to ensure they get best prices for their yield. In case they don’t produce the assured minimum yield even after following the package of practices, the firm gives them timely compensation. SecuFarm is a complete income protection solution for the farmer that also drives them towards sustainable and climate smart farming practices.
Through Ingen Technologies Private Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of WRMS established in 2008, WRMS manufactures, supplies and installs agriculture and supply chain related IoT devices for government and private sectors. It also works towards making the agriculture data accessible as a service for the concerned clients in the industry. The IoT devices provided by WRMS for the agriculture, dairy industry and supply chain logistic solutions add up to the major revenue stream for the company. The company also offers accurate and real-time weather data services using automated weather stations that help measure parameters like temperature, humidity, rainfall, wind speed, wind direction, and solar radiation every second. Using electronic traps and image processing methods, remote pest monitoring is carried out. Farmers may arrange smart irrigation using automatic irrigation switches using the WRMS IoT services, saving them time, energy, and water.
WRMS has well-rounded experience and has developed significant experience in offering full-stack services in parametric and agriculture insurance. Our holistic service suite includes following services offered through advisory and SAAS platform developed exclusively for parametric and agriculture insurance contracts. WRMS has done Index Insurance product development and hazard assessment studies in India, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, Zambia, Mozambique and Malawi. Not only this, all the insurance companies providing Weather Index Based Insurance in India have used WRMS’s services in product design and distribution.
How WRMS is handholding farmers using technology ?
WRMS (Weather Risk Management Services Private Limited) is a pioneering smart farming company that was founded in 2004 with a vision to empower farmers to overcome the most daunting agrarian challenges. The company leverages data, technology, and financial services to provide holistic solutions that enhance agricultural productivity and secure farmers’ income in an environmentally sustainable manner.
WRMS provides farmers with advanced sustainable farming solutions that help them achieve better yields and a guaranteed income. We help farmers with our SecuFarm app from seed selection to sowing, plant management, pest control, weather advice, harvesting, and the post-harvest phase. The latest technology solution in the agricultural sector helps farmers with accurate real-time agricultural data collection. Farmers can also connect with our Agri experts through our app for instant solutions for the health of their crops. We offer IoT-based agriculture services like accurate & real-time weather forecasting using Indigenous Automated Weather Stations to measure parameters like temperature, humidity, rainfall, wind speed, wind direction & solar radiation every second. Remote pest monitoring is done using electronic traps and image processing algorithms. We also help farmers plan smart irrigation using automatic irrigation switches which save their time, effort, and water. Thus, we offer holistic tech-based agriculture solutions to our farmers which make farming easy, sustainable and profitable for them.
WRMS has made farming easy & sustainable for farmers across India with the right & timely information. By associating with WRMS, farmers are now gaining more profit in their farming business. Earlier they were facing many agrarian challenges that were affecting their crop yield, quality & prices. They were using more pesticides that were affecting both soil quality & crop. Now with the guidance of WRMS, they use the right amount of pesticides and are becoming able to produce more yield with less expenditure. WRMS reaches out to the farmers to provide them with timely advisory & alerts regarding crop health, weather forecast, etc. By connecting with WRMS, they get all the information beforehand. They need not visit any advisor as our field officers visit farms regularly to educate farmers.
Technology without risk management will not address farmers’ problems. Why ?
Farmers take risks every day and make decisions that have an impact on their business. The weather can change, prices at harvest time could decrease, hired labour might not be available during busy times, machinery and equipment could break down when most needed, draught animals might die, and government policy can change overnight. These risks have an impact on the farm’s profitability.
Farmers can control future risks and adapt to climate change with the aid of risk management techniques and technologies. The agro- sector and policymakers are both searching for strategies to make the sector more resilient to risks from weather, markets, and other shocks and to make it easier for it to adapt to climate change. Farmers are better equipped to deal with risks and uncertainties by developing resilience, which is the capacity to anticipate, prepare for, absorb, recover from, and adapt to bad occurrences. In fact, they may even gain from any new opportunities that these factors may present.
On this front, WRMS provides farmers with SecuFarm that de-risks farming and helps farmers achieve better yields and guaranteed income. We help farmers with our SecuFarm app from seed selection to sowing, crop management, pest control, weather advice, harvesting, and the post-harvest phase. The latest technology solution in the agricultural sector helps farmers with accurate real-time agricultural data collection. Farmers can also connect with our agri experts through our app for instant solutions for the health of their crops. We offer IoT based agriculture services like accurate & real-time weather forecasting using Indigenous Automated Weather Stations to measure parameters like temperature, humidity, rainfall, wind speed, wind direction & solar radiation every second. Remote pest monitoring is done using electronic traps and image processing algorithms. We also help farmers plan smart irrigation using automatic irrigation switches which save their time, efforts and water. Thus, we offer holistic tech based agriculture solutions to our farmers which make farming risk-free, sustainable and profitable for them.
Small and Marginal Farmers in India: What are the Challenges and Opportunities ?
Low literacy rates, traditional agricultural practices, lack of trust in adopting technology, low investment capabilities, and herd mentality are some of the challenges faced by small and marginal farmers to employ smart farming approaches. Farmers are reluctant to change as a result of the risk and ambiguity involved in farming.
India has a tremendous opportunity to reap the advantage of being an IT giant and revolutionize the farming sector. But in order to achieve that, farmers of tomorrow must be given technical or vocational training for the sake of themselves and the greater agricultural economy at large. Through such training, farmers can better understand their assets, identify the opportunities, and make use of them efficiently and sustainably. With education, farmers get to know that agriculture goes beyond tilling the soil and cultivation of crops. Hence, for the holistic development of small and marginal farmers and to protect their interest in domestic and global markets, a policy at union and state level and even more effective regulation is the need of the hour. This will aid in leveraging the strengths of modern and large players in the agribusiness value chains for a win-win for all stakeholders involved so that inclusive and effective sustainable agricultural development could be achieved.
Agriculture IoT Market May Set New Growth – Why?
The agriculture industry is witnessing a major shift nowadays due to the technologies of industry 4.0. The farming industry benefits from technological development, from planting and irrigation to crop health and harvesting. IoT solutions are focused on helping farmers close the supply-demand gap by ensuring high yields, profitability, and protection of the environment. The approach of using IoT technology to ensure optimum application of resources to achieve high crop yields and reduce operational costs is called precision agriculture. IoT in agriculture technologies comprises specialized equipment, wireless connectivity, software, and IT services.
WRMS is massively contributing to it as we are the manufacturer of low-cost agriculture IoTs. Ingen Technologies Private Limited, a fully owned subsidiary of WRMS, is a leading IoT manufacturer of automatic weather stations, automatic irrigation systems, pest traps, survey drones and soil moisture sensors. The company recently collaborated with Regional Meteorological Centre, Guwahati, Assam, India, Meteorological Department (IMD), and the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES), Government of India, and bagged the contract for procurement, installation, and maintenance of Automatic Rain Gauge Stations in the North East States of India. The company is working with many government organizations like Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre, Andhra Pradesh State Development Planning Society, and more.
Smart farming techniques by WRMS are supported by IoT technologies that enable growers and farmers to scale back waste and enhance productivity, starting from the amount of fertilizer utilized to the number of journeys the farm vehicles have made, enabling efficient utilization of resources like water, electricity, etc. IoT smart farming solutions may be a system that’s built for monitoring the crop field with the assistance of sensors (light, humidity, temperature, soil moisture, crop health, etc.) and automating the irrigation system. Farmers can monitor the sector’s conditions from anywhere. They can also select between manual and automatic options for taking the necessary actions to support this data. For example, if the soil moisture level decreases, the farmer can deploy sensors to start the irrigation. WRMS smart farming techniques are highly efficient when compared with the conventional approach.
Key tech-trends that will dominate the agriculture sector in 2023?
3 key Agritech trends to watch out for in year 2023 –
- Sustainability using modern technology – The year will witness agri industry to leverage the power of sustainable farming practices. It is very well evident that sustainable farming practices will play a crucial role in 2023 to meet the demands of the expanding population. Technologies, such as AI, will enable the use of relevant data leading to low-input agriculture and better decision-making. IoT technology can be used to optimize the use of agricultural resources and enhance crop yields.
- Empowering smallholder farmers – Over the past few years, there has been a massive focus on building farmer-centric solutions for small holder farmers. We expect this trend will significantly pick up pace in 2023 and beyond. Global food-system stakeholders have realized that meaningful and enduring transformation of agriculture is not possible unless smallholder farmers at the grassroots level are trained and enabled to adopt smarter, more efficient, and sustainable ways of farming.
- Maps-based pest management and productivity analysis – Pest and disease management is a problem for farms and agribusinesses all over the world. Farmers struggle to safeguard their crops from pests and illnesses due to inadequate pest management practices. Similarly, agribusinesses may find it quite challenging to evaluate and pinpoint the most productive plots.
What is the USP of WRMS ?
WRMS is not just a smart farming firm, but is more than that. WRMS is the only company that offers farmers 100% income stability, advisory at the farm level, granular information, and farm-level loss assessment. We also provide SecuFarm, the world’s first Smart & Sustainable Farming solution that guarantees farmers’ livelihood stability.
Having a decade of experience in the sector, WRMS has worked extensively with the leading names like Pepsico, GIZ, WWF, Tata Trusts, Bayer, etc. along with government and govt-run bodies like NCFC, APSDPS, KSNDMC, and Bihar Government. With 2.5+ million farmers served, 1 million acres of land geo-tagged and 10,000+ IoT devices installed, WRMS is a stalwart in the agriculture and dairy risk management industry.
WRMS is a pioneer of many firsts, such as bundling the world’s first parametric insurance with an agri-input value chain. It started CARM services in India; introduced bundled solutions of Index Insurance (BICSA), India and Bangladesh; satellite-based flood index insurance product, UP; Index insurance for securing credit to chili farmers, Andhra Pradesh; Parametric insurance based disaster risk financing solution, Fiji; and many others. Not only this, WRMS provides integrated risk management and regulatory services that help financial institutions, insurers, and corporates understand, quantify, and manage their risk associated with weather – earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, and other weather events – and crop yields.
