Soil Intelligence Platform-Carbon Fixation in Agriculture.

Every year around 3400 Farmers suicide in India and Approximately 228 M globally Small farmers face the economic challenges of crop waste due to climate change and soil infertility because they have no tools to monitor soil health data and utilize the resources.70% Of fresh water is used in Agriculture and 65% of the amount of carbon we generate through our food production. This is not useful for small farmers nor beneficial for our environment. 

We are on a mission to provide farmers with a more sustainable farming option, addressing the economic and environmental issues plaguing the agricultural sector. According to the Food and Agro Organisation (FAO) Around 65% of excessive Nitrogen and Carbon we use in our agriculture remains in the environment and destroys 1/3 of global crop waste, one of the leading problems for productivity as well as environmental issues. Lack of Real-time Soil information leads to poor soil health and crop degradation and loss of millions in low crop yield and financial losses. 

With India's agriculture market valued at over 873 billion USD, there is a significant opportunity for impactful innovation in this sector. We aim to empower farmers with real-time soil and crop data, enabling them to make informed decisions and improve their economic prospects. With over 550 million small to mid-size farmers worldwide, our solution addresses the critical need for innovation in agriculture, particularly among those living on less than 40 USD per day, with farms averaging 2 hectares or less.

Sensegrass is a Climate Intelligence Platform for agriculture that helps small to mid-size farmers reduce the excessive nitrogen and fertilizers from the soil using a patented NPK sensor and optimize the crop data through Artificial intelligence Agronomists grow better with low fertilizer intake to make the future food. After three years of research and two patents, we built wold first of kind AI Agronomist that helps farmers grow more and higher profit but equally, reduces the environmental impact on our food system.

Data Optimization is hard for proper use and we have developed the AI Agronomist SaaS for the optimization of sensor and satellite data for actionable insights to users. Our AI Agronomist uses millions of data points to tell users about the right usage of resources at the right time and quantity.

We have developed wireless NPK soil sensors with Proprietary Technology using the optical FTIR transmission that detects, measures, and analyzes NPK, soil nutrients in real-time on our platform with an AI prediction engine recommending best sustainable practices to improve crop yield, And then our AI Agronomist optimizes the crop and soil data to inform users to get the right decision to use nitrogen at right time, right place in the right quantity. 

 We help Users to 

1- Reduce Excessive Fertilizers -Upto 40>#/p###

2- Improve Crop Yield - up to 24>#/p###

3- Increase Farm Income.-Upto 1.5 X

Please take a quick product Demo- 

https://drive.google.com/file/...

So far we have impacted 12,000 + Small to mid-scale farmers and 100+ corporates with our solution.

We are making a world-first smart soil sensor for NPK detection using our patent technology that measures more than 12 parameters from micro soil data (including NPK fertilizers) detection and gives solutions and predictions to farmers for better decision-making to get the best crop yield and save money in farms. Most affordable Tech solution for Small size farmers

Agriculture is one of the largest industries in the world, without any recession, it remains going on. India has an Agri-based economic system so do many other developing economies, While Agriculture is the most dominant industry it's still broken and based on many outdated methods that are based on wisdom and old practices. So the market is huge, and the need is big. 

We serving to small to mid-scale farmers in developing economies, those who are fully dependent on agriculture as a primary occupation. Around 118 Million farmers in India and approximately 550 Million around the globe are the people we would like to serve. These are generally come under below the pyramid and earn less than the basic minimum income threshold as per the rural income index. 

A Farmer needs to spend around $20 for soil tests on each sample every one time, Our cost is half of the current options avilable product in the market with around 12 parameters more compared to one single parameter, let me give a use case to help us explain cost and performance metrics, One soil moisture (Important soil feature) cost around 1100-1800 USD per unit in the US, while our Sensesoil cost 249 USD with 12 parameters including NPK due to proprietary circuits and technology. The conventional method of soil testing is an accuracy of 10-12% while our accuracy reach to 65% (NPK) and 90% (The rest others). We plan to raise the price by double and also offer customize sensor plans.

Our solution is fit for the global market and we have tested it with paid customers while our focus is on small to mid-size individual farmers which are around 72% of the global workforce responsible for 90% of global food production and require a solution like this that is fitted with small farms and crops they grow.

We help small scale low-income farmers' communities in developing economies through two impacts- 

1- Environmental- Reduce carbon emission and input cost, save land to become infertile. 

2- Socio Financial - Improve income and help them to grow healthy crops with higher prices. 

Our focus is currently on India and Developing markets where we are currently in operation with a major number of our customers with the most revenue coming from here. Huge market with a lot of potential to grow.

Third Generation farmers started Sensegrass to solve the problem of which we were part for a long time. We started Sensegrass a couple of years back to solve agriculture's biggest challenge and known each other for 15 years and worked together in the past with an exit. We are a team of serial entrepreneurs, third-generation growers, and first-generation immigrants in the US. The perfect mix of scientific, business, and technology background with over 30 years of exprience. We have known each other for almost 15 years and worked in the past on succesful projects with individual exits.

Dr Lalit Gautam- Full Time. O1A Recipient, Lalit has a degree in pharmaceutical Medicine (Pharm Doc) with an MBA in International marketing and entrepreneurship with over 10 years of startup experience. MIT 35 Under 35, Forbes 30 Under 30 for Technology Manufacturing, and also a finalist of Social Entrepreneurship. Lalit has One exit as well.

Dikshi- Co-Founder- She is a Computer science graduate and MBA, Ex-Google and Square with over 15 years of experience, with great acumen in marketing and product development. she is one of the most impressive women founders in the Agtech world. 

Rahul Gundala- Full-time Rahul Gundala working full-time at Sensegrass as CPO has completed a master's in product development from the University of Maryland Recently & a bachelor's from IIT-D in CS. He has 11 international papers in Siggraph, IEEE, and HCVI among others in the fields of robotics, computer graphics & design principles. 

Apart from founding team we have some amazing team members building this initiative for 550 Millions farmers around the world. Around 40% are women members in our team.

Shamal- CMO- Shamal comes from a minority area of India, a lead of marketing with over 18 years of exp.

Swapna- Design Officer- Swapna has 12 years of IT and Design experience and worked with many organizations prior to sensegrass 

Varun Pandit- Chief Research Officer- IIT Graduate and over 8 years of microeconomics and Machine Learning experience.

We have some board of advisors and mentors helping us to build the great product but also connecting with org to scale from companies like Corteva, Microsoft, etc

A sustainable enterprise working in several communities and expanding the business in 2+ nations that is focused on increased efficiency. Proudly Impacted 12,000+  Small to midsize farmers ( Land Area- 4 hectares) with 20000 Hectares of land in 22 States and improved income by Double and Reduced fertilizer by 42% and 22% Co2 Reduction. We have raised our Seed round and backed by ventures like Sony, Techstars, Google org and generating early revenue to moving towards sustainble revenue stream in future. 

Social enterprises thrive on impact, motivation, and network support, Solve is one of the programs supporting and taking social initiatives like us to the next level through the right resources. MIT Solve Entrepreneurs know this very well. 

We are solving one of the most critical challenges for our food system requires the support of all community members and experts to tackle this issue and create a sustainable food system for our farmers so they can keep feeding us the entire population.

Our biggest motivation to apply for Solve is divided into four major asks from the Solve community that will help us to grow our impact 100 times through a sustainable model based on plant, people, and profit.

1- Network and strategic support from the MIT community and network of solutions, We have moonshot innovation with validation, proven results, and market-ready deployment stage, we need extensive support from the experts towards business, growth and sales strategy, technology, product development, impact assessment, funding and network to reach out more farmers and markets. 

2- Funding- Grants from MIT Solve aren't the only fund we seeking, the validation and award from Solve will help us to reach the funding goal we looking for in the coming months.

3- Outreach- MIT Solve is a leading startup competition, we need outreach, applauds and marketing to share our solution, technology and impact to around the world so it will help us to reach out to people who want this, this can be done through solve, biggest brand and benchmark certification.

4- Support from the peers, Biggest learning comes from your peers, they give you most honest opinions, connections, support, and collaboration, MIT solve has the best peer network with wonderful social impact solutions around the world to help each other.

Limitations of data, Agricultural, and environmental data is available but in bits and pieces, this is the reason why we are facing a huge crisis of climate change on our environment because we do not have factual data to take action, this is a huge issue. we aim to create an operating system OS to streamline the data and leverage geospatial and sensor data combinations for personalized inputs and recommendations.

We are a combination of IoT Enlabled AI Solution, a 360* approach to convert entire unstructured data into personalized solution to make immediate and effective impact on climate issues. 

We are a Patented Technology for NPK Prediction under Sensegrass with technology related to agriculture and soil intelligence. We also have a first-mover advantage in NPK sensing technology and so far only two companies are offering real-time probes in the market. Our Core product is a patented IoT-based hardware sensor Device, which is the most innovative hardware available in the market measures 12+ parameters from the soil through patented optical transmission technology and is connected over a cellular network, which can be easily used for 360* farming solution at any remote part of the world without any electricity as this is powered with solar panel comes with plug and play model, doesn't require any tech support to use or implement this. Which makes it independently worded and hassle-free to install & use.

Data Optimization is hard for proper use and we have developed the AI Agronomist SaaS for optimization of sensor and satellite data for actionable insights to users. Our AI neural network with millions of data points tells users about the right usage of resources through a smart plant card system and if something changes in the field due to weather or water changes it gives a warning with a solution to make sure they correct the problem.

We are first company to combine power of Satellite+Personalized Sensor Data+enviromental weather+User Input data to gives personalized analytics through our AI Agronomists in a minimal cost.

We have spent 3 years on this, coming from the same population we are solving this problem for, let me give you an example to explain this statement- Currently, the only conventional method available in the market is Soil health through lab testing,  and unfortunately, the only conventional method is traditional soil lab testing method, because its expensive, less accurate and doest help a poor not so educated grower. 

Our theory of change is highly influenced by 1. Cost- The current method is costly less accurate and nonreliable. 2. Sustainblity- High use of fertilizers making soil infertile, lands getting smaller, high N usage 3. Political- Tight regulation and strict rules by governments and policies by the federal and international organizations for the usage of fertilizers and soil health index.

Inputs:

• Research and development of innovative agricultural technologies and practices that help small-scale farmers.
• Access to funding and investment for product development and scaling.
• Collaboration with farmers, agricultural experts, and climate scientists.
• Partnerships with government, NGOs, and international organizations working on climate change.

Activities:

1. Develop and implement climate-smart agricultural technologies and practices:

   • Innovate and refine agricultural technologies such as precision farming, smart irrigation systems, and crop monitoring tools.
   • Conduct trials and pilot projects to test the effectiveness of new technologies in improving agricultural productivity while reducing greenhouse emissions and resource consumption.

2. Provide education and training:

   • Offer training programs and workshops to farmers on climate-smart agricultural practices, soil health management, and sustainable farming techniques.
   • Develop educational materials and resources to raise awareness about the importance of climate-resilient agriculture.

3. Facilitate access to resources:

   • Provide access to financing options, subsidies, and incentives for farmers to adopt climate-smart technologies and practices.
   • Establish partnerships with financial institutions to offer tailored financial products for sustainable agriculture.

Outputs:

• Adoption of climate-smart technologies and practices by farmers.
• Increased awareness and knowledge among farmers about climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies.
• Improved agricultural productivity, resilience, and sustainability.

Outcomes:

1. Reduced greenhouse gas emissions:

   • Decreased carbon footprint of agriculture through the adoption of practices such as reduced tillage, cover cropping, and agroforestry.
   • Mitigated methane emissions from livestock through improved herd management practices and dietary supplements.

2. Enhanced climate resilience:

   • Increased crop yields and resilience to extreme weather events such as droughts, floods, and heatwaves.
   • Improved soil health and water management leading to greater agricultural productivity and food security in the face of climate variability.

3. Sustainable livelihoods and economic growth:

   • Increased income and livelihood opportunities for farmers through higher yields, cost savings, and access to premium markets for sustainably produced agricultural products.
   • Stimulated economic growth and job creation in rural communities through the expansion of climate-smart agriculture and related value chains.

Impact:

• Contribution to global efforts to mitigate climate change and achieve sustainable development goals related to food security, poverty alleviation, and environmental sustainability.
• Long-term resilience of agricultural systems and ecosystems to climate change impacts, ensuring the well-being of present and future generations.

This is the framework we use after our first three years of problem research to make sure what we build is useful for our population.

The next 2-3 years will be highly important for us in terms of expansion and strategic tie-ups with various regional agricultural boards, non-profits, and private partners to get access to 2000000 Farmers in India and other regions. We are raising our Series A capital within the next year and also tie-up with production partners for commercial production of our devices to reach out to across India. 

Our big plan is to get into agreement with the Govt of India to replace lab soil test method with Soil intelligence system on a private-public partnership model.

Next 6 months onwards our solution will be an in a key position in India and other parts of the world as well, post-COVID agriculture and food system will be in a major role towards the transparency of our food and crops, usage of less fertilizer and more sustainable farming options.

As an Indian agriculture start-up, our aim is to create high impact and make agriculture hassle-free by eradication of fertilizers from the soil as well improve the financial condition of our farmers. In the next 1-2 years, we want to bring at least 60% of Agri cultivation to sustainable precision farming, reducing global pollution index & improving land restoration. And have more yield to meet the needs of the upcoming population. Our expansion plan with 8 states in India and continue working in Uganda and Kenya with 120K Farmers for the next two to three years.

Being an Agriculture focus Social Enterprise, Environmental and Financial Impact is our main key metric to measure our success and bigger impact is our primary vision in the company. To measure our Impact we follow two methods- Primary Assessment Quantitative method and assessment through conglomerate.

We usually create two core impacts- Environmental and Financial, Which are highly aligned with our core business values and model.

Environmental Impact- Being an Agtech company our core value of the company is to create environmental impact by reducing fertilizers in the soil, reduce Co2 Consumption, Improve water usage, More yield, saving soil destruction, etc, and making agriculture more sustainable. We measure our results through our Analytic and Assessment method using the tools to analyze and measure how much fertilizers we reducing and improving in crop yield, etc. So far our user's study on the ground which compares to traditional governments labs and competitions show the

following results-

43% Reduction in Input Cost

35% Crop yield increase

18% Improvement in Income

Financial Impact- 

Our Tech solution helps them to improve almost 38% less fertilizer in the field which not just creates environmental impact but saves money from the farmer and improves the average income by 22% of a small farmer with a landless then 4 Hectares. Our 12000+ Farmers has been improving there seasonal income by double due to improving yield, reduction in external resources usage like fertilizer,s urea, extra water, electricity etc.

Our product have two core component that is proprietary of sensegrass, IoT Sensors and AI algorithms.

Our Core product is a patented IoT Enabled AI Solution, First, the hardware sensor Device, which is the most innovative hardware available in the market measures 12+ parameters from the soil through patented optical transmission technology and is connected over a cellular network, which can be easily used for 360* farming solution at any remote part of the world without any electricity as this is powered with solar panel comes with plug and play model, doesn't require any tech support to use or implement this. Which makes it independently worded and hassle-free to install & usage, Second AI Agronomist gives personalized Agronomist to give recommendations.

We are world-first Solar-powered wireless NPK soil sensors with Proprietary Technology (Patent Pending) using optical transmission that detects, measures and analyzes NPK, soil nutrients I real-time on our platform with AI prediction engine recommending best sustainable practices to improve crop yield. While processing macro-scale Nano-Satellite Image mapping for GIS analytics & visualization on users' farmland.

Our 360-degree solution is the best fit for large corporate farms for macro-level monitoring while effectively guiding as AI agronomists for small & mid farms which comprise 72% of global farms with a wide range of crops & topographies. With GIS, we are making agriculture recommendations more precise through nanosatellite field images understanding soil degradation over time-period that helps us design & prescribe crop modelling techniques that improve soil quality by AI

Agronomist engine using ML over the large database for historic crop & soil data & real-time field information.

Over iteration of our IoT solution, we have developed low maintains & fall over ready solutions with the best industry protocols like LoRaWAN, optimized data push frequency to improve battery life.

And we are also prototyping independent locally hosted network grid to operate for data visualization & transmit to the cloud for analytics & crop modelling prescription

Also, our in-house Smart soil sensing has wide coverage and accurate data surveillance under and above the soil parameters. We are implementing a Machine Learning algorithm, to automate human activities involved with artificial intelligence analyzing data to give precise solutions for better cropping.

We are done with MVP, three pilots, and post-beta customer acquisition successfully before we launched our solution. We are in the live stage now and are working in India and other nations with over 12000+ Small-scale farmers. 

Our Technology is advanced for optical spectrophotometer which is currently used by traditional lab methods while we use optical transmission for real-time soil chemical analysis which is based on chip-based methods. 

We have patented our technology for chemical and fertilizer estimation and first moved into the market. We have One patent, One PCT, and Two Provisions and generating revenue and raising Series A next year.

Our Technology is developed and validated by two leading Agriculture and Research Institute, Technion, Israel, and the Indian Institute of Agriculture Research, India with over two years of research and Development.

We have done Pilots and Research with three different org and markets and validated with the above-mentioned Institute with Pilot Reports. This is approved by ICAR and Technion.

We have currently 21 People working with us.

19 Full-time staff.

2 Part-time Staff

We have been working for last three years that's include couple of years of post product research.

Sensegrass is an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer. Individuals seeking employment at Sensegrass are considered without regard to race, sex, color, creed, religion, national origin, age, disability, genetics, marital status, pregnancy, unemployment status, sexual orientation, citizenship status, or veteran status.

Founders are third-generation farmers from India, they are a minority community of India, we have been in the same situation like millions in this world we make sure what we face in our life does not repeat to others on the basis of color, caste or religion, we belive diversity is a strong expertise people can bring to table, we have 40% women, 5% LGBT and people from four different continents. 

Our vision is to reach every farmer on this planet and this is only possible with a great distribution model and effective business model.  We are a B2B2C company.

B2B SaaS that includes a software subscription and leases ● USD 20K+/yr, depending on the number of sensors+Acre (Enterprise) ● $249/yr for software, $220/yr for sensor lease (Producers & Non-enterprise ag professionals) B2C- $4 Per acre.

Primary enterprise customer categories are F&A companies, Organic fertilizers, Technology, Banking, Insurance providers, Government bodies and local NGOs including UNDP, World Bank, etc. 

While we have an effective secondary customer base which is B2C- Direct farmers are beneficiaries as well.

A combination of Enterprises and Farmers we can scale this to a global level which we have validated as well. 

Agriculture is one of the largest industries without a recession, While Agriculture is the most dominant industry it's still broken and based on many outdated technologies so the market is huge and the need is big. Our solution is fit for the global market and we have tested it with paid customers while our focus is on small to mid-size individual farmers who are around 72% of the global workforce responsible for 90% of global food production and require a solution like this which is fitted with small farms and crops they grow.

Our focus is currently in the Indian market where we are currently in operation with a major number of our customers with most revenue coming from here. Huge market with a lot of potential to grow.

Overall the global market for us is More than 3 Trillion USD (Total Addressable Market ) market, But our Primary Addressable market in SE Asia (Serviceable Addressable Market ) which is around 1.2 T USD Plus market with more than 18 countries including India, China, and Malaysia which is responsible for half of global crop production and our current focus is on India (Current Obtainable market ) which we believe we can capture by 2025 as major Agtech company with the highest market share in our segment.

We are a seed-funded startup and have raised around 500K USD mostly from various grants from the governments and org like Google. We are generating revenue as well to fuel our growth and planning to break even by 2025. 

Using two strategies for Go To Market that help us to acquire customers expand rapidly and become a self-sustainable company. Direct Approach through our Direct Sales and Local channel partners (Small Ag Precision, Hardware, Fertilizer, Tools Companies, and Chains). These help us to reach local but direct users with an effective and affordable method without putting more expenses on the sales side. We tie up with Local governments, Farm Co-Ops, Stores, and Small Companies mentioned above, etc.

We are partnered with some leading food and agro, Data, and Tech companies in India and other parts of the world, including Governments as well that helped us so far in our journey.

We have been working with Pepsico, Bayer, Yara, Kissan Helpline, etc and we have around 20 leading partners in our sales fennel like BASF, Unilever, Cargill, Danone, etc.

We also partner with Microsoft in Europe under the Farmbeat flagship, We will be soon on the Microsoft marketplace which gives access to more than 100000 Microsoft partners around the world.

We made a detailed and five year road map to make sure we exited as a successful IPO in impact sector