India's economy depends on the agricultural sector, which is improved in large part by AgriTech startups. However, the industry faces obstacles like the limited uptake of cutting-edge techno- logies because of their high cost and difficult implementation. To fill these gaps, Dr Siddhartha Khare, Assistant Professor at IIT Roorkee, founded Bhoomicam with a vision to revolutionize the agricultural sector by leveraging precision Geospatial technology. The firm provides innovative AI-powered Geospatial solutions, offering an easy-to-use platform that incorporates Satellite Remote Sensing and Drone-based analytics at farm level scale, along with weather forecasting to enable better decision-making and boost productivity and sustainability in agriculture.
Bhoomicam, a business-to-business (B2B) facilitator, collaborates with government agencies, AgriTech firms, and farmer producer organizations (FPOs) to support their operations with state-of-the-art Geospatial insights. The startup provides a range of API-based services that allow users to white-label its technology and integrate it seamlessly with other platforms. Critical agricultural tasks such as crop stress management, water stress monitoring, crop health analysis, chlorophyll concentration assessment, and yield estimation are supported by these solutions.
Bhoomicam ensures that farmers of all sizes, who are the end users, receive accurate advice and assistance to maximize productivity by providing AgriTech companies with actionable analytics. "Our goal is to use advanced analytics to translate satellite and drone data into actionable insights for precision agriculture that can be used while maintaining data integrity and security. Using Sentinel-2 from the European Space Agency and other high-resolution datasets, we deliver accurate, updated analytics every five days, giving our clients information that is trustworthy and ready for decision making", asserts Dr Siddhartha Khare, Founder, Bhoomicam.
Bhoomicam has received prestigious recognition for its influential work in the Geospatial Agritech sector such as the ‘Young Achiever's Excellence Award’ by the India Education Forum and India Employer Forum at the Making India Employable Conference and Awards 2024 in Mumbai, and ‘Best Geospatial Startup Award’ at the National Geospatial Awards 2024, which were hosted by FOSSEE (GIS), IIT Bombay, under the Ministry of Education's National Mission on Education Through ICT.
We integrate spatial analytics to foster sustainability, strengthen farmer financial ties, and enable data-driven farming practices
Comprehensive AI-Driven Offerings
The research and development (R&D) team has created various AI-powered custom solutions to tackle important issues in modern agriculture. The startup offers practical insights to enhance farming practices through the integration of ground data and satellite-based analytics. These insights include determining crop damage at different scales, tracking trends in field productivity, and producing accurate maps for uses such as fertilizer management and variable-rate seeding. The organization's solutions offer tools to pinpoint impacted farm locations and produce comparative reports from year to year to address pressing concerns such as stubble burning.
Bhoomicam’s expertise extends beyond agriculture to the fintech industry, allowing banks and insurance providers to evaluate loan risks, prevent fraud, and remotely monitor crop health with frequent updates. Bhoomi Score, an AI-powered metric that rates farm sustainability and health practices on a scale of 0 to 10, helps farmers gain more credibility with banks, which makes it easier for them to get insurance and loans.
The Way Ahead
In the next two years, the startup wants to ensure that its API services are widely used by integrating its Geospatial solutions with private AgriTech companies and FPOs. “We want to work with government agencies to align our technology with public agricultural initiatives. Another important focus for us would be educating future agronomists and agricultural scientists about the potential of drone-based technologies and satellite remote sensing”, concludes Siddhartha.
