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Pushkar Limaye, Co-Founder and CTO, Carnot Technology talks to us about his work in AI and IoT.
What are the new evolutions in the AI enabled IoT techs in your segment?
Pushkar Limaye - Agri-tech is growing exponentially with the help of AI. AI-driven sensors and devices collect real-time data on soil health, weather patterns, and crop conditions, facilitating precision agriculture and these new evolutions and solutions are witnessing growth and appreciation. AI-enabled IoT is analyzing agricultural data both historic and recent to offer predictive insights, optimizing irrigation, pest control, and resource allocation.
For us we believe, the kind of segment we are catering to is not just about finding solutions for that segment but we are also growing and making that segment. The rental entrepreneurs we identified is a very new segment. Till now no-one had really understood this segment or provided solutions for them.
We began with the kits and we saw that this kits and telematics can be very beneficial for tractor rental entreprenuers. The rest is histroy. We have been working on increasingly providing better solutions to support them and empower them.
During season we get around 20Cr data points everyday fr our kits. Imagine 8 times land size of Mumbai that is the amount of farming data we get on our platform. So we are constantly working on utilising it first for rental entrepreneurs with advancements in our offering and technology. Besides this, with the help of AI, we recently launched our first fin-tech initiative.
We are now experimenting with parameters like can we add satellite technology to that, is there a visible shift in farming patterns in which we can see the effect of changing patterns etc. So right now a significant portion of our data analysis is around giving value to individual owners and these are the new Ai-enabled offerings we are working on.
How cost effective are these techs for the medium and small enterprises especially in terms of post-installation maintenance costs?
Pushkar Limaye - The long-term benefits often outweigh the expenses and we have witnessed this first hand with our customers. Right now installations have crossed 30,000 and retail has crossed 35,000. It is as difficult as selling IO ticket to an Indian farmer but last month roughly 1000 of our sales came this way and even installation happened on video call. Our product can be installed by farmers themselves and that is the simplicity and ease of use that we have achieved in our product for the users.
One of the ways why we know we are successful is because this product needs a sim card. It’s a subscription model. So if the farmer is subscribing again and again then it’s a win. Our retention rate is more than 75%. In terms of product pull we are seeing healthy numbers. Almost 85% people open their app every single day. On an average people spend 30-40 minutes on the app checking insights. These numbers are seasonal. The most important validation of the product is the subscription. After using for 6 months if they are asked to pay 2000 yearly they do so. 8000 people have already recharged again.
Do you get these techs from other organisations or do you have your own R&D units to evolve technology?
Pushkar Limaye - We have our in-house team and our own R&D. We are a team of around 40 people including farm advisory, satellite technology, tractor technology.
What was your revenue growth % in the last 1 year? This financial year we closed profitable with 23Cr as top line. For the next 3 years we do not have a business plan to be profitable as we are looked upon as a growth gem within Mahindra. While the growth story continues we will probably spend a lot more on sales etc in the coming year and we are looking at growing at 2X in the next 3 years getting to 50 Cr revenue.