Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd.’s Farm Equipment Sector (FES), a part of the USD 19.4 billion Mahindra Group, empowers farmers through various mechanization techniques and products. Digital and Data driven farming is definitely the future of farming and hence Mahindra had launched Krish-e across various states in India earlier this year. With the tag line – ‘Expert Takneek. Naye Upay. Parinaam Dikhaye’ – ‘Krish-e’ is a new business vertical that provides technology driven services which are progressive, affordable and accessible to farmers. It aims to increase farmer income through digitally enabled services, across the complete crop cycle.
This is done through a strategic manner through agronomy advisory, access to advanced farm equipment rentals and new-age precision farming solutions, all focused on bringing down overall farming costs and improving crop output and consequently the farmer’s income. It is an innovative new business vertical conceived with the idea of ushering in a new digital age of farming in India. It aims to transform the lives of farmers, by helping them adopt better more effective farming techniques powered by AI, IoT and digital solutions that are affordable and accessible paving the way for increased productivity and profitability. M&M has made strategic investments across the globe including in Resson – a Canadian predictive analytics company, Gamaya – a Swiss hyperspectral image analytics company and Carnot – an Indian AI enabled Agri IoT Company.
In order to create a nation of ‘Champion Farmers’ Krish-e Precision Farming solutions use a variety of sensors and cameras on the farm, on drones, on satellites and on farm equipment to collect soil, crop and machine data. AI algorithms transform this data into user friendly and insight rich field maps, enabling farmers and agronomists to run variable rate farming operations, using intelligent machines. Such operations are already helping potato, grape and sugarcane farmers reduce their costs of cultivation and improve their yields.
The company is working on introducing a range of farm machinery, with the idea of taking technologies used in large land holding farms around the world and making them affordable and accessible to small land holding farmers. A step in this direction are alliances and acquisitions in Agri Technology and start-ups in the last few years. Basis these acquisitions and partnerships, Mahindra has launched new Agri Machinery such as a potato planters and rice transplanters.
The pandemic has triggered increased adoption of mechanisation on farms due to factors like labour migration, which has resulted in very good growth in farm machinery sales in F’21. Mahindra has one of the widest range of farm machinery offerings and are working towards the introduction of newer ones, based on the expertise from the ‘Global Centres of Excellence’.