Startup Mantra: Farmers turn to SmartU for money management

Hindustan Times

5 days ago

Two friends, Sachin Patil and Nishant Burnase, who hail from farming families in Vidarbha and share similar backgrounds, have a story rooted in the agricultural heartland of Maharashtra. They both lived and experienced the problems that almost all farmers in India do. The agri-advertisement market is
₹ 12,000 crore, with 30% digital and growing at a 10% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). However, data segmentation of 18 lakh farmers yielded only
₹ 16 lakh in the previous year. (REPRESENTATIVE PHOTO)
Says Burnase, who did biotechnology from Nagpur University, 'Farmers lack agricultural data. They do not have a clear picture of what they are spending on, where they should tighten the purse, and where they should spend more. They buy seeds, plough the land, hire labour and go through the routine without much data that could help them immensely.'
'They do keep diaries, but that's a rather crude way to know how much you are spending. At times, if they haven't carried the dairy to the market while making their purchases, they may add it later, but then again, it will be based on memory and in the hustle and bustle of daily life, they may not get the accurate figure or even forget to add that cost factor. Diary based account keeping is not really reliable, and it is certainly not advisable to do farming business without accurate costing,' says Burnase.
On the other hand, Patil, who did MBA from SGB Amravati University, observed the same issues. While the two of them started their careers with jobs, Nishant with ICAR as a biotech researcher and Sachin with an MNC as a marketer, the problem with the farmland at home continued in its routine way. The two friends decided to find a way to solve this pain point that the farmers faced.
They understood this. Rural India is rapidly embracing smartphones and has improved internet access. However, there are no easily accessible tools for simple on-the-go farm financial management. Says Sachin, 'We felt that having a way to account for every big or small expense would enable the farmer to make the right decisions in farming. However, the diary was insufficient. Therefore, we thought, why not develop a digital diary? We could develop an app that the farmers could download from the Play Store.'
However, having lived in rural Vidarbha, the duo knew the limitations of the app. Sachin continues, 'Farmers are comfortable in their language, which is Marathi. Moreover, they may not be able to use an app as easily as WhatsApp, which they use constantly. So we thought, why not use WhatsApp as their digital diary?'
Moreover, says Nishant, 'We would not have to take the trouble of developing the app, undertake huge marketing plans to have them downloaded and used. WhatsApp existed on every smartphone; all they had to do was use it, which would be far easier for them.'
Deep dive at the start
Before starting their digital diary, the duo went into the market to study their needs more carefully. Says Nishant, 'Sachin and I hired 220 students, SmartU Village Ambassadors (SVA) from our area, who were conversant with the farmer community. We conducted a survey to determine what would work. As suspected, we found that not many were tech-savvy or conversant with apps. Moreover, WhatsApp was commonly used by all, albeit for different purposes. They didn't need to learn how to use WhatsApp. So WhatsApp it was.'
Nishant and Sachin tied up with a third co-founder, Ramsha Sheikh, who has a master's in IT, to develop their WhatsApp solution, which they called SmartU, now known as GramIQ.
Building GramIQ
Ramsha used a Chatbot to converse with the farmers. It included several categories in which they could include their cost inputs. They are typically based on different stages of farming: seed expense, ploughing, planting seeds, fertiliser, spraying pesticide/fungicide, labour cost and harvesting. A farmer can get into the GramIQ WhatsApp bot and feed the data as and when it occurs. He has to select the crop from the list and note his expenses as per his spending.
Says Nishant, 'This took a mix of grassroots research, technological expertise, and perseverance. We conducted extensive field studies to understand the habits, challenges, and preferred communication channels of farmers. Sachin and I hired students from Vidarbha who knew the farmer community and, together, conducted a market study.'
For their study, they met and got insights from 500 farmers. The founders translated this understanding into a solution built for real-world conditions by using a GramIQ Chatbot. It is a solution that does not require app installation. Farmers simply message bots to manage expenses, gain insights, and receive farming advice in regional languages. After three months, they had their minimum viable product (MVP) ready. 'Since then, it has been refined and expanded continuously over three years through farmer feedback and real-world applications. On Marathi Bhasha Divas, they did a soft launch of SmartU on February 27, 2023, now known as GramIQ. GramIQ helps farmers track their expenses, know if they are going over budget, and then use some 'gharelu nuska' to save on costs and optimise their expenses.
Getting traction
Initially, 500 farmers who participated in the market study signed up. Says Sachin, 'In our village, communication is different from that in urban India. In cities, mass media can be used, but in villages, very few are ready to be the first users. It often goes by word of mouth. The interns hired for the study were enlisted again in the GramIQ market. We made them our GramIQ ambassadors, who could talk to farmers and handhold them. Initially, we hired about 220 ambassadors.'
Three months after the launch, 3,000 farmers were enlisted. Says Sachin, 'What worked for us was that the resistance to getting started was zero. WhatsApp was downloaded and used on the phone. In addition, the platform is self-explanatory and easy to use. The farmer can get quick answers to his questions; there were no response delays as Chatbots responded in real time. Also, they could share this with others in no time.'
To spread awareness, they started a digital campaign on Facebook and Instagram. 'From our brand awareness campaigns, Meta ads allowed people to land directly on WhatsApp. In a month after this, we had about 30,000 users.' The duo had seen a higher proportion of traction from Western Maharashtra. Says Nishant, 'Farmers from this region are always more inclined towards accepting new things, adapting to new technologies. We noticed that 25% of our customers were from this region. So we opened our office in Wakad, Pune, to manage and on-board customers.'
Says Nishant, 'Since the farmers were seeing the benefits, they were able to reduce costs by 20% and increase profits by 15%, the word spread fast. This grew from 30,000 users in 2024 to 18 lakh users in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh (MP) today. Of these 18 lakh users, the daily active users are 2 lakh. What worked for them is the fact that this is not a tech-heavy app so the reach is larger. Moreover, says Nishant, 'The decision to use WhatsApp and not a coded app worked.'
Revenue
GramIQ offers the service free to farmers but leverages its user base to earn revenue. Says Sachin, 'We have a simple revenue model. Although we do not charge the farmers, we perform a lot of back-end profiling and data segmentation. We keep information on the size of the farm, crop patterns, harvesting stages and geographies, etc. This type of data segmentation is vital to advertisers. So let's say a fertiliser company wants to advertise a flowering spray for cotton. While Facebook will provide data and say there are 400 cotton farmers in Vidarbha, we go one step ahead. We inform them who among those 400 is in the flowering stage of cotton. Makes the advertisement that much more impactful.'
The agri-advertisement market is ₹12,000 crore, with 30% digital and growing at a 10% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). However, data segmentation of 18 lakh farmers yielded only ₹16 lakh in the previous year. Says Sachin, 'People need to see the results before undertaking a spend. As of now, we have ₹30 lakh worth of advertisement orders in the pipeline, as they have seen the return on investment (ROI) that SmartU has given. We are now targeting ₹2 crore in revenue by the end of this financial year.
Funding
Says Nishant, 'Our minimum viable product (MVP) was built cost-effectively with limited resources—just one IT engineer and ₹5 lakh. Since then, we have invested over ₹20 lakh in personal savings. Today, GramIQ is supported by a committed team-- three IT engineers, one operations manager, two business strategists, five field outreach professionals, and two agronomists who ensure the platform is both technically sound and agriculturally relevant.
We raised capital from a variety of sources: ₹5 lakh from RKVY Raftaar Manage Hyderabad, ₹20 lakh from the founders personal contributions, ₹1 lakh from the TMF Group Netherland as a corporate grant, ₹1 lakh in award money from Startup Mahakumbh New Delhi, ₹5 lakh from friends and family and ₹25 lakh in debt financing approved under the Startup India Seed Fund.
'As of now, we are looking to raise ₹2.5 crore. We need these funds to enhance the technical backbone of the platform and scale our farmers' outreach programme, so we can get more farmers to use GramIQ and expand our operational capacity to reach farming communities across India. We have 180 million farmers in the country.'
Competition
Competition will always be there. Their competitors are Krishify and FarmERP, which offer mobile-based information platforms. However, says Nishant, 'Our unique selling point lies in simple, WhatsApp-based farm financial management, which is more accessible for non-tech-savvy farmers. Moreover, we provide segmented data that they could not as of now.'
India has 180 million farmers who want to optimise their operations and increase their profits. Our model is free for farmers. Through our data, we generate revenue by helping agri-businesses connect with the right set of farmers.
Future plans
'We want to become a rural intelligence engine. Whenever someone wants to promote anything to rural India, they should come to us. We should be part of their go-to-market (GTM) strategy,' says Sachin.
Part of that plan is to develop a data platform, GramIQ, that is a rural intelligence engine designed to empower rural India. Says Nishant, 'This platform will create village-level digital touchpoints operated by local youth, offering services to farmers and gathering on-ground data.
The model not only supports rural employment but also strengthens our data intelligence and distribution moat in India's agricultural ecosystem.'