What is the name of your organization?
Coolcrop Technologies Private Limited
What is the name of your solution?
CoolCrop: Cooling As A Service
Provide a one-line summary or tagline for your solution.
Enabling access to decentralized solar-powered cooling and preservation systems on service basis to farmers
In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?
India
In what country is your solution team headquartered?
IND
What type of organization is your solution team?
For-profit, including B-Corp or similar models
Film your elevator pitch.
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What specific problem are you solving?
In India, most of the small farmers cultivate horticultural crops for making most of their limited land holding. With more than 120 million farmers, India is 2nd largest producer of fruits and vegetables across the world with wide ranging basket of produce across its geography. However, on average 30% of the perishable crop harvest is wasted at the farmgate especially since the farmers do not have any facility to precool or preserve their produce, maintain its quality and increase its shelf life. Hence, they are forced to sell their produce on the same day of harvest at throwaway prices. Lack of adequate energy infrastructure also makes operating any conventional preservation systems costly and challenging. Hence, small farmers have negligible access to any cooling or preservation infrastructure at the point of harvest or aggregation.
Without any storage infrastructure, they are the behest of the volatile market conditions of the day to earn their livelihood from their horticulture produce.
What is your solution?
CoolCrop develops decentralized solar-powered cold storage systems for farmers customized to their needs, location and crop storage requirements. A basic size room would be 10 x 8 x 8 feet and can accommodate close to 2500 kg of produce stored in crates, run by a 3.5 kWp solar Photovoltaic system and can operate without any grid connection. The farmers harvest their produce and sort it into crates to be loaded into CoolCrop's cold rooms to be precooled and stored in ideal conditions until the time farmers find the right buyer or right price. CoolCrop's units are powered by solar PV systems during the day, controlled by CoolCrop's control and monitoring system and during the night the thermal energy systems maintain the temperature through passive cooling. Farmers use mobile phone based user interface to set the right temperature and humidity conditions and monitor the unit over storage period. All this is being modelled as a service by CoolCrop under its Cooling as a Service program where farmers would only need to pay for using the storage area per weight or unit of crop stored.
Video demo link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXhnJYPYBus&t=26s
Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?
More than 80% of farmers in India are small and marginal farmers who earn equivalent of 500 USD in a year through their agricultural activity. They usually cultivate vegetables, fruits and flowers on whole or part of their limited land holding to ensure better value. However, these are perishable crops with limited post-harvest shelf life. With no available facility to preserve, aggregate and store their perishable produce, farmers are at the behest of local market players to gain any value for their harvest. CoolCrop's decentralized solar-powered cold storages are located at farmgate or point of aggregation for these farmers to preserve their produce to maximize their shelf life and have better bargaining power at the markets. CoolCrop's Cooling As a Service (CaaS) model also makes it affordable and accessible for small farmers to use the solution without any capital investment.
