Neurafarm
According to the FAO, by 2050, we'll need to feed 2 billion more people. It means that we have to increase our food production by at least 70%. Meanwhile, the amount of arable land is decreasing, the amount of farmers is decreasing, resources are depleted, and uncertainty is increasing. This raises a big question: "How to feed the world?" Neurafarm is founded on the belief that the power of innovation and technology could solve even the world's biggest challenges, including food security. That's why we're committed to improve productivity and resource-use efficiency by providing affordable technology for farmers. We also believe that precision farming is something that all farmer can do, and we want to enable that.
To fulfill global demand for food in 2050, we couldn’t afford to lose any food and need to increase yield instead. Currently, Neurafarm focuses itself on plant disease/pest problem, which is a recurring global issue and a burden for agriculture industry as a whole. Each year, 20% to 40% of total global crop production is lost because of pest and plant diseases in important crops such as maize, potato, tomato, etc (FAO). It is equivalent to $40 billion in the US alone and is an economic burden for farmers around the world. According to our survey, the majority of farmers identify plant diseases using their own experience and assumption which makes it not accountable and not accurate enough. Sometimes, it led them to total crop failure.
At our organization, we strongly believe in the use of technology to help farmers feed the world. By providing tools so that they will be better equipped on a day-to-day basis. A key challenge faced in the field is building trust – in the product, in the service, in the organization itself. Trust is one of the very reasons why they've been excluded from the digital economy at the first place. The farmers (we met) are resistant and it's hard to introduce new ways of doing things/technology/knowledge to them. The other reason is technological literacy. Our strategy to cope with this is by working side by side with farmers and provide as many proof as possible to them. There is clearly a need of having people on the ground to address trust and 'technological' capability/literacy issues that prevent farmer uptake and usage of digital solutions. That's why we are leveraging our network of demonstration plots, or working through lead farmers, to maintain a human connection to farmers. Some smallholders are
We are currently focusing our attention on pest & plant disease. On top of the decreasing number of farmers, arable land, etc. There's another big problem lurking from the corner: pest & crop disease. Which accounts for up to 40% of global yield losses annually (FAO). This makes it hard to produce more food. That's why, first, we develop our first product: Dr. Tania. Which is a chatbot-based mobile apps that could help farmers to indentify pest & crop disease from mere images by leveraging Artificial Intelligence. The only thing the farmers need to do is to take a picture of a plant and send it to Dr. Tania, and she will give you a comprehensive diagnosis, treatment recommendations, alongside link to proper product that can be used to treat the disease. There's also a catalog that is available for farmers to learn about cultivation and disease management. We hope that farmers could prevent crop yield losses and produce more. From this on, we plan to roll out more features: plague alert, guidance, connect to expert, and many other tools to help farmers on a day to day basis. Going forward, our strategy will focus on building a family of products and services that empower farmers & business to produce more, reach more, and distribute better.
- Support communities in designing and determining solutions around critical services
- Create or advance equitable and inclusive economic growth
- Pilot
- New technology
We are currently focusing our attention on pest & plant disease. On top of the decreasing number of farmers, arable land, etc. There's another big problem lurking from the corner: pest & crop disease. Which accounts for up to 40% of global yield losses annually (FAO). This makes it hard to produce more food. That's why, first, we develop our first product: Dr. Tania. Which is a chatbot-based mobile apps that could help farmers to indentify pest & crop disease from mere images by leveraging Artificial Intelligence. The only thing the farmers need to do is to take a picture of a plant and send it to Dr. Tania, and she will give you a comprehensive diagnosis, treatment recommendations, alongside link to proper product that can be used to treat the disease. There's also a catalog that is available for farmers to learn about cultivation and disease management. We hope that farmers could prevent crop yield losses and produce more. From this on, we plan to roll out more features: plague alert, guidance, connect to expert, and many other tools to help farmers on a day to day basis. Going forward, our strategy will focus on building a family of products and services that empower farmers & business to produce more, reach more, and distribute better.
we develop our first product: Dr. Tania. Which is a chatbot-based mobile apps that could help farmers to indentify pest & crop disease from mere images by leveraging Artificial Intelligence.
Dr. Tania is a freemium app and we plan to generate revenue from subscription fee. As we provide product recommendation, we also open and offer space for agrochemical company to list their products on our app. The ad placement itself will be our biggest revenue source. The best thing about Dr. Tania is that we designed it to be highly scalable, product-wise and business-wise. In the future, we will add more feature and services that can be integrated to Dr. Tania and will be our source of income as well, including B2B solution, data analytics solution, farm management, API as a service.
- Artificial Intelligence
Each year, 20% to 40% of total global crop production is lost because of pest and plant diseases in important crops such as maize, potato, tomato, etc (FAO). It is equivalent to $40 billion in the US alone and is an economic burden for farmers around the world. According to our survey, the majority of farmers identify plant diseases using their own experience and assumption which makes it not accountable and not accurate enough. Sometimes, it led them to total crop failure.
we started some projects with farmers to improve their yield, and on the initiation effort of adding more value and market their products. We estimated to improve their yield by 30% and their income by 40-50%. Therefore Neurafarm want to decrease the farmer's loss by pest and disease so, they could improve their live
- Rural Residents
- Very Poor/Poor
- Low-Income
Dr. Tania has been used in more than 35 cities in Indonesia with more than 650 users. We've work with dozens of farmers community/union to build our product and services in Bandung area in terms of usability, features, etc. It is a significant focus of our work to scale access to as many people as possible. However, due to limitation of resource and the nature of farming (take a long time to complete) since our soft launching in mid 2018, we've only been able to working in Bandung and intensively work together on farm with two farmer community: Mandala Jati and Kintamani Youth Farm. Which consists of 20-40 farmers. As for Kintamani Youth Farm, we supported their project of creating educational tourism park which focuses on coffee (2000 m2) in collaboration with farmers at Subak Abian Suka Maju Dusun Langkan in Bali which will boost their productivity and immerse new youth farmers.
Our next step is that we want to reach around 20,000 users by the end of 2019 and gain 100K of users and make Dr. Tania able to identify more than 1000 plant disease in 150 commodity in 2022. A
Funding Risk: Delay or inability to keep developing the product, Loss of stakeholder support. Mitigation: (1) Looking for and securing funding backups. It could be from grants/competitions/other channels. (2)Assembling a great founding team to demonstrate the ability of the company to execute the idea. Hence minimizes the risk of failing and increases trust from potential investors. Doing market research and demonstrating need and demand to show how viable the business is to attract investors. Technology/Product Risk: Loss of market share to other similar technology provider, Change of markets and customer demands. Mitigation: (1) Building a MVP (or a series of them) or PoC (Proof of Concept) products may be the practical manifestation of this understanding. (2) Building and investing in a great tech, R&D, and product management team to continue to develop great products in terms of features/additional services e.g hardware (3) Finding strategic partners to accelerate growth. (4) Planning to deliver a family of product rather than a single product to build ecosystem and great integrated solution. that will put you in position to expand our product line and keep one step ahead of competitors. Market Risk: No one wants the product. No investors interested. Delay or inability to receive funding Delay or inability to keep developing the product Mitigation: (1)Conducting several market research techniques (2) Building go to market strategies (3) Building great customer relationship systems
through support from partnership
- For-Profit
Neurafarm was founded in 2017 in Bandung, Indonesia. It operates (conducting research, building community, and developing the product) in Bandung Area. The organization has always had a big vision: to end world hunger, improve farmer welfare, and make the world a better place. Residing in Indonesia (especially Bandung) will make Neurafarm uniquely and well-positioned to successfully achieve our vision and mission. With its vast and abundant fertile soils Indonesia is a major global key producer of a wide variety of agricultural tropical products. Agriculture sector still provides a livelihood for the majority of Indonesian households. In 2012 this sector employed around 49 million Indonesian individuals, which represents 41 percent of the total Indonesian labour force. Agriculture sector also contributes 13.6% to the country’s GDP. Not only does the country have a great number of farmers, the government itself is very supportive. In tandem with the various digital initiatives under way, the government is also looking to encourage the use of more advanced methods and inputs among smallholder farmers. Neurafarm is ready to help with this initiatives. Given the large role that agriculture plays in the Indonesian economy, the
full time 4 staff, part time 2 staff, out sourced 10 staff
Neurafarm was founded by Febi Agil Ifdillah, Naufalino Fadel Hutomo, Pebriani Artha, and Lintang Kusuma Pratiwi. Currently, Febi serving as CEO and leading the organization. Febi was graduated from at Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) in 2018 with Computer Science major. Hoping to provide value to masses with something he created. He decided to bring impact, one line of code at a time. Naufalino was CEO of Scientia Indonesia before joining Neurafarm. An education startup, focusing on training students in Indonesia to excel at national science olympiad. He was majoring electrical engineering and graduated from Bandung Institute of Technology. Pebriani Artha was co-founding Scientia Indonesia with Naufalino and was CMO of the said company. She deeply cared about education and actively volunteering in Bandung as a teacher. She studies System and Information Technology and graduated from Bandung Institute of Technology in 2018. Lintang was the most outstanding student at her faculty and graduated in 2018, holding Bachelor's Degree in Agriculture Engineering. They believe that the power of innovation and technology could solve event the world's biggest challenges. All of them decided to embarked on the journey of answering the question: "How to feed the world?" and want to revolutionize the agriculture industry.
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Dr. Tania is a freemium app and we plan to generate revenue from subscription fee. As we provide product recommendation, we also open and offer space for agrochemical company to list their products on our app. The ad placement itself will be our biggest revenue source. The best thing about Dr. Tania is that we designed it to be highly scalable, product-wise and business-wise. In the future, we will add more feature and services that can be integrated to Dr. Tania and will be our source of income as well, including B2B solution, data analytics solution, farm management, API as a service.
Dr.Tania opens up many opportunities with lots of potential benefits for customers, industries, and society as a whole. Below are several opportunities presented by Dr. Tania:
Community of farmers. Community is the backbone of any strong and growing brand. The reverse is also applies in this case. It is possible to build a great community of farmers under the tag of a brand (Dr. Tania), as the nature of the features available in Dr. Tania itself is enabling some communities to grow through our apps. This established community will allow faster product feedback so that we can build an entire ecosystem of farming technology that answer their problems.
Neurafarm was founded on the belief that the power of innovation and technology could solve even the world's biggest challenge and Dr. Tania is the manifestation of that very spirit. In today's world, Neurafarm's mission and vision (to end world hunger, improve farmer welfare, and make the world better) is more important than even. Winning the award will help us to gain exposure, and capital to keep momentum to achieve our mission.
- Business model
- Technology
- Distribution
- Funding and revenue model
- Media and speaking opportunities
Astra Agro Lestar, Sinarmas Ltd, Great Giant Pineapple for widen our impact on plantation, Syngenta, Bayer for product sponsorship
We will use the grant as follow: 1. 30% for marketing 2. 5% for research 3. 23% for product 4. 5% for field officer 5. 37% for operational We want to hire: 1. Field officer: 2-3 people 2. Hardware Engineer: 1-2 people 3. Software Engineer: 2-3 people 4. Sales/Marketing: 2-3 people 5. Agronomist: 2-3 people We will create more deployment plots for research, improve our AI (gathering more data, hiring more agronomist), and creating hardware solution. As for marketing, we learned that social media marketing wasn't that effective, so we plan to do door-to-door marketing and approach more business that might be interested in our solution.