An app developed by a city-based IITian, which helps in integrating data of a farmer’s produce and returns, has been selected to represent the country on an international platform. Livelihoods 360 , developed by Raghu Kanchustambham, the founder & CEO of ConceptWaves, was adjudged the winner of Digital Media 2014, an initiative of Uninor and Nasscom.
The app will compete with other globally selected apps at Digital Winners’ Conference to be held in Oslo next month vying for a cash prize of about Rs. 10 lakh. Introduced in 2012, the app is targeted at about 10,000 tribal farmers of 600-odd villages of the Araku region.
“We collect data related to yield, actual produce and farmers’ payments. The information is captured effectively on a smart phone by a set of trained truck drivers who move from one village to the other. By just clicking a button, all the details about a farmer and his present and previous produce can be accessed. By even including the credit history, we have helped decrease the payment time,” said Mr. Raghu.
“Our ambition is to use the power of the internet and mobile technology to increase the growers’ access to success in anticipating yield quality and quantity. We bundled the benefits from the mobile technology and married it to the cloud to achieve our end product,” he said.
Though the mobile programme is limited to coffee and pepper farmers for now, Mr. Raghu said that efforts are on to increase the usage of the app in other types of crops and regions in the country. “A lot of things can be built around this platform. For instance, additional information pertaining to a farmer can be added to determine sanitation facilities or literacy in the area. This data can also be used for research purpose,” he explained.
Winner of some international awards too, Livelihoods 360 is supported by Naandi foundation and SAMTFMACS.
