Agriiprince

  Dr. Shailesh Vaya did B. Tech in CS Engg, IIT Delhi, and Phd in Theoretical Computer Science (Algorithms and Cryptography), UCLA. He has been faculty in Department of Computer Science and Engineering, at IIT Madras. He was a  Senior Researcher at Xerox Research Center India, Bangalore. He is devoted to developing technical solutions to help the prosperity of small and marginal farmers, and landless laborers, which constitute about 85% of all farmers in India.

  Our goal is to build technology based solutions, especially those availing pervasively accessible technology like satellite imagery, mobile internet etc. to help the farmers in increasing productivity, reducing costs, increasing selling profits, as well as to increase rural employment. We have built several modules that provide small and marginal farmers, with precision farming advisory, at all stages of cultivation, and including targeted solutions where to sell their crops to maximizing profits. Many of our solutions use deep tech solutions like computer vision, time series forecasting etc..

  One of our solutions, also provides an interface by which a farmer can request for farm labor for small/long periods of time, and landless laborer can seek part time or full time engagement on some neighboring farm land. Any matching between the seeker, and the labor will increase productivity/profits, as well as increase employment in rural India.

  This project attempts to solve the problem of employment, increasing production, increasing prosperity by achieving greater productivity and profits and employ ability in rural India. The basic solution for this project only targets match making between farm labor and farmers. Later we want to increase some renting of food processing tools, so women and other man-power can receive part time and full time employment.

  Rural India population is 40% of total Indian population. There is currently more than 10% unemployment, and largely in rural India. Globally, this problem is also quite skewed. The present crisis (of lack of availability of labor on field, and availability of employment) can be solved to some extent using technology based matching, to relate labor and labor seeker.

  While our solutions for agriculture are 360 degree, and touch every aspect of farming, especially targeted to solve it for small farming entrepreneurship. However, the additional solution this project proposes is to leverage the technology for matching the labor with the labor seeker. it works very simply:

  The labor puts his availability along with rates for short (few days), medium (few months) and long periods (several months). The farmers searching for the labor can search within different radius (Kms), and get the lead of the labor if he is available. The engagement can last for various periods of times. The two are put in touch for the concluding the engagement, while one pays for annual subscription fees to avail these services.

(1) Farmers

(2) Landless labors

(3) We talk to various farmers to understand their needs. we are subscribing them to our app. When subscribing the app, we add their profiles, and needs on the app.

(4) Our project is developing more traction currently so more labor/farmer matches happen through us. 

  Our overall mission is to help rural India with greater prosperity in the 10 crore small farmers (40-50 cr total population), availing pervasive technology, especially interfaced via pervasively used smart phones.

  This particular project of matching landless labors with farmers is an additional solution that appeared as we increased our solutions gamut. This particular problem of farm labor problem was raised when visiting a farmer in karnataka, when he posed the challenge of lack of farm labor in his affairs. Furthermore, he asked if we can find him some labor from the part of India, that has more unemployed youth like Bihar or Uttar Pradesh. Presenting this, as another feature of our otherwise very highly complex set of solutions, and many of which are driven by deep tech, was just another feature to add as marketing is otherwise very hard for single solutions.

Impact.

Alleviating poverty. 

Increasing prosperity.

  Our technology for smart phone app, uses strong back-end technology that works also in poor, jittery rural networks with spasmodic telecom networks with poor bandwidth.

  My core skills are in algorithms and cryptography etc.. theoretical computer science. I understand technology well and can develop robust technology for technically challenging problems. Experience-wise, have now sufficiently detailed experience understanding various problems of the farmers.

  Basically, my intention was to create solutions that can make very large scale impact and that is easy to deploy and use. To create the impact, I had to stick to technology based solutions and use smart phone as the medium through which solutions can be interfaced. Encountered many problems along the way as being single entrepreneur (lately have found a serial entrepreneur to join). I ran out of my allocated fund in developing the various solutions, got selected at NIAM (national institute of agricultural marketing) for incubation support, for some monetary support to stretch myself a bit.

If it was any other business, then I would have dropped it, however my vision encompasses impacting a massive population through technology, so I have not given up yet, as the funds and personal assets keep drying up though.

People may say I have a character defect, of some type, in the sense of not being able to give up, and be more practical about it all. 

  I had recently initiated this Covid India Campaign, which worked with several state govt, hospitals, doctors, etc.., creation of medical devices (ventilator splitters) etc..  The CII grew to have several - almost 20+ alumnii of IIT/IIM and leading doctors working for it, along with almost 500 volunteers. I was the main founder of Covid India Initiative, though currently I work only on my venture.