World Bank-financed APART gives CCE mandate to Leads Connect

Noida

The Government of Assam (GoA) has given the Crop Cutting Experiments (CCE) mandate for its World Bank-backed project, Assam Agribusiness and Rural Transformation Project (APART), to Noida-based Agri-tech company, Leads Connect. The agritech company will conduct the CCE in 23 districts of Assam on a pilot basis, according to a Leads Connect press release.

APART was launched in the year 2018 by the Government of Assam through the Government of India and received huge funds from the World Bank to uplift the agricultural sector of the state and encourage farmers to use technology to increase production.

Navneet Ravikar, Chairman & Managing Director, Leads Connect Services Private Limited, informed that “getting a mandate to conduct CCE for different zones of Assam is a huge achievement for us as an organization, and we are very excited and prepared to deliver the project successfully.”

He added, “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 advanced technology such as geospatial technology and artificial intelligence along with comprehensive field observations is important. Performing these studies with sheer accuracy and precision is key to providing people-centric solutions besides the necessity of upscaling developed solutions. So, the research unit of the organization will also be utilizing 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.”

Leads Connect, with its cutting-edge technologies such as remote sensing and GIS, numerical modelling, 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. Its pan-India presence is backed by a comprehensive presence of a field team and a well-equipped research lab.

Leads Connect is an analytics company with a core focus on agri-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 agri-business ecosystem. Besides the core focus areas, the organization has been engaged in R&D-based analytics related to climate and hazard, landscape, biodiversity, city, and geospatial analytics.

The agritech company has delivered projects related to CCE, remote-sensing-based crop health monitoring, crop acreage, crop yield estimates, risk and claim management services to various central and state organizations, insurers and reinsurers. In addition, it has 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 the GP level. It is 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.