Srinagar, January 20: A Kashmiri agritech startup, Orchardly was selected among 14 other startups from across the globe to showcase their product under sustainable innovations in Elevate VII pitching session at Expo 2020, Dubai. The session was held to showcase how these startups can transform the world with their sustainable innovations, ideas and enterprises.
As per a press release, Orchardly is a home grown startup building an intelligent platform to provide advisories & disease predictions to growers based on soil health and real time weather data.
“We are reinventing the horticulture sector in the region by bringing consistency, dependability and sustainability in this sector. Our aim is to improve grower profitability & environmental sustainability through the use of intelligent agri insights. We deliver orchard specific, crop-specific, crop-stage specific & topology specific actionable advisories to minimise grower risks and increase crop quality & productivity,” said Izhan, Executive Director at the startup who represented the startup at Expo 2020.
Asked about the working of the product, he said, “We have developed a unique AI based disease prediction model which can help lakhs of farmers save around 30-40% of loss in crop value each year.”
“We are working towards making a chain of Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLE) who will be empowered to set up soil testing labs and provide credit based agri inputs to our growers. We are developing an AI platform to predict rates of horti crops across all major mandis in India and provide the same in real time to our growers,” said Ehsan, CEO of the company.
Asked about the uniqueness of the product and how it is going to help farmers, he said, “India being world number sixth in terms of Apple production in the world is only number second in terms of area under production. Orchardly aims to increase the productivity of the farmers by 4-5 times and make them globally competitive by increasing their quality and quantity.”
Elevate pitching series is one of the key initiatives by India Pavilion at the Expo 2020 Dubai to showcase the best offerings of Indian startups to a global audience. The objective is to facilitate innovators and start-ups to get adequate exposure and attract B2B connections at the global stage.
Dr Aman Puri, Consul General of India (CGI) in Dubai and Deputy Commissioner-General for India at Expo 2020 Dubai also attended the event.
On the occasion he said: “The Government of India and the UAE are committed to working together to foster innovation between the two countries and contribute towards a sustainable world.”
“Elevate pitching series and interactions with prestigious organizations such as Dubai Silicon Oasis, Dubai Technology Entrepreneur Campus, TiE Dubai among others, provided excellent opportunities for the Indian innovators to interact with investors, global counterparts for further networking and partnership,” he said. (KDC)
