Type: Blended
PHASE: Define
CATEGORY: Agriculture
LOCATION: Bhaktapur, Nepal
Pratham
Asia

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Pratham, an intelligent data driven, mobile and telephone based advice provider to farmers, empowering them to improve their quality of lives through access to intelligent actionable information on farming.

Standings & Awards

1313 out of 1313 in Asia
139 out of 139 in Agriculture
930 out of 930 in Define
1066 out of 1066 in Blended
4003 out of 4003 Overall
Using technology to help farmers develop better approaches to agriculture and attain economic development.

In spite of having physical resources like fertile soil and rainfall, the rural farmers in South Asia are pushed into the dartk pit of poverty due to their lack of soft (knowledge) resources. It includes the lack of decision making ability in farm related tasks, such as knowledge about a particular crop or animal disease, the knowledge of fertilizers and idea of selling the crops to the market at a profitable price.

Pratham aims at developing a sustainable mechanism for knowledge distribution to farmers in regions where the lack of ideas and techniques is at a level at par with lack of resources. It aims to make use of the knowledge derived from previous high-tech approaches to agriculture such as data mining in agriculture and precision agriculture and targets to impart the knowledge from these fields to the general farmer.

In order to do so, Pratham intends to make use of services like IVR, USSD and SMS which are available to a farmer in rural areas. Pratham shall be built on top of an intelligent data mining based agricultural intelligence system, which shall be powered by algorithms capable of finding the best match for a given farming situation. The user (farmer) shall be able to run queries to the backend via IVR or SMS frontend and get an insight about the best decision to take. In doing so, not only will a farmer be best served about the knowledge of soil, the rainfall or the type of worms eating away his plants, or the pesticide amount but also the farmer shall be made aware about the current prices for the crop to be sold. This way, the system shall serve as the first friend a farmer should consult. Thus the name Pratham, meaning "first".

Support Your Idea Optional (5 - 7 minutes for three uploads)

Supporting Document: 
application/pdf iconA reaseach work showing the application of Cloud based approaches to improving the quality of agriculture.
application/pdf iconA presentation showing the application of Data Mining in the field of agruculture, helping in the procution growth.
application/pdf iconA research work showing how intelligent query generation and processing is possible in the field of agriculture.

Roadmap to Success Optional (1 - 3 minutes to upload)

Roadmap to Success: 
application/pdf iconroadmap_to_success.pdf

Sponsors, Investors, and Supporters

Data Entry In Nepal
Partner for developing the Intelligent Data Mining Systems
Data Entry in Nepal is a service provider that we will collaborate with. It will provide specific information to farmers based on their queries. These information will be obtained using past data collected through various sources.
FAO
Data Provider and Knowledge Assistance
The Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN could help in providing necessary data required to build the system. The larger the data, the better the system thus a potential help from the FAO should be a crucial one.
Nepal Telecom
Partners in providing mobile services
Nepal Telecom is the most widely using mobile service provider in Nepal. It has also successfully penetrated the rural areas of Nepal. Collaboration with Nepal Telecom would be advantageous to provide our services to a larger audience.
Central Bureau of Statistics, Nepal
Partners in providing statistical knowledge
Central Bureau of Statistics will provide us with the necessary data required to provide the users with the necessary information. These information will be available free of cost.

FIVE PROJECT QUESTIONS Required (60 - 90 minutes)

1. What is your innovation? 
The innovative part of the project lies in exploiting the results of previous incidents involving agricultural issues and using data mining algorithm to learn from those data to suggest better results for users. The information will be made available through mobile phones that are widely used in rural areas of south Asia. The project aims to provide farmer with information that enables them to make better informed decisions. Information dissipation through mobiles is key to our project.
2. Who gains the most? 
The farmers will able to make better informed decisions regarding farming practices. This will lead to higher productivity and better realizations of prices. The company that manages the entire operations benefits from the long term profits potential and social dividend. The network provider and telecoms gain inroads into rural markets with increased penetration. The society benefits, in the end, through increased food security and economic empowerment.
3. Who pays? 
The initial funding needs to come from government and agencies like ADB or FAO who could provide seed funding. In the medium to the long term, funding could be expected from telecom companies and potential investors with interest in rural markets and agricultural products especially agro-based companies. Farmers would bear a nominal charge for IVR calls or SMSs or USSDs. Potential of revenue through advertisement from companies aiming to reach rural markets can be explored.
4. What is your success? 
We expect the service to reach a critical mass in the next six months and visible signs of improved farm productivity in certain pilot areas. Effective creation of an organizational structure in the next 12 months would be a measure of success. Within 3 to 5 years we expect a visible sign of a sustainable and scientific method of cultivation in the areas and an increase in household income. Export of the technology to other geographies would be a key success milestone in the first decade.
5. How will you do it? 
The first step involves obtaining seed capital. Then we collaborate with telecom and data mining partners to create the necessary system. Mass awareness amongst targeted users of the project is important which requires partnerships with local organizations. Following this, a pilot area is selected and based on the experience, services are fine tuned. Once we achieve success at a small scale we will pitch for further funds and expand our project.