Government of Assam for its World Bank backed project, Assam Agribusiness and Rural Transformation Project (APART) has given the Crop Cutting Experiments (CCE) mandate to Noida-based Agritech company, Leads Connect. The agritech company will conduct the CCE in 23 districts of Assam on a pilot basis.
APART was launched in the year 2018 by the Government of Assam through the Government of India and received funds from World Bank to uplift the agricultural sector of the state and encourage farmers to use technology to increase production.
On being appointed, Navneet Ravikar, Chairman & Managing Director, Leads Connect Services informed that “getting a mandate to conduct CCE for different zones of Assam is a huge achievement for us an organisation, and we are very excited and prepared to deliver the project successfully”.
“It is now indispensable to develop measures and frameworks for climate-resilient agriculture for addressing the issues of food insecurity. Therefore, the need of using advance technology such as geospatial technology and artificial intelligence along with comprehensive field observations, are important. Performing these studies with sheer accuracy and precision, are keys to providing people-centric solutions besides the necessity of upscaling developed solutions. So, the research unit of the organisation will also be utilising this opportunity to further their research and development activities for developing quality products, in the context of climate-resilient agriculture and disaster management, as these aspects are now needed to be studied in sync,” Ravikar further said.
Leads Connect, with its cutting-edge technologies such as remote sensing, GIS, numerical modeling, artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics frameworks, will co-observe the CCEs conducted by the Government of Assam. This pilot study will start from September 2021 and will be done for Kharif 2021. Currently, the agritech company is engaged in delivering projects in more than 100 districts of India and has a Pan-India presence backed by a comprehensive presence of field team and well-equipped research lab.
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Leads Connect is an analytics company with a core focus on agriculture technology-driven data analysis and modelling, risk management and financial services. It aims to connect the farm value chain for enabling a sustainable, scalable, and profitable agribusiness ecosystem. Besides the core focus areas, the organisation has been engaged in research and development-based analytics related to climate and hazard, landscape, biodiversity, and geospatial analytics.
Leads Connect has delivered projects related to crop cutting experiments (CCEs), remote sensing based crop health monitoring, crop acreage, crop yield estimates, risk and claim management services to various Central and state organisations, insurers, and reinsurers. In addition, they have delivered projects pertaining to GP level yield estimation using technology. It has used machine learning algorithms and satellite remote sensing analytics to develop a framework for yield estimation at gram panchayat (GP) level. They are currently monitoring CCEs for Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) in more than 100 districts across India along with geotagging of agriculture infrastructures in 125 districts for NABARD Consultancy Services (NABCONS), a wholly owned subsidiary of NABARD.