Cropin, a global agri-ecosystem intelligence provider, has recently won the Climate Innovation Challenge (CIC) grant, a sub-component of the Program for Asia Resilience to Climate Change, a trust fund administered by the World Bank and funded by the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO)
Cropin was chosen as a winner for its technology-driven approach in the agriculture sector with the motive to make individual farmers in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh climate-resilient with tailored advisory services. In this endeavour, Cropin will make use of its ICT platform with web and mobile interfaces. According to the company, the proposed solution has been successfully deployed in over 200 projects across the world.
The programme
The Climate Innovation Challenge (CIC) aims to crowdsource innovative and disruptive technology solutions from around the world for resilience in South Asia. Through grant awards, matchmaking and pilot-testing, CIC will facilitate innovations across different sectors at national, sub-national and local/community levels in the region.
Krishna Kumar, CEO and founder of Cropin said, “Opportunities like these come by rarely, and as an organisation driven to bring about a change in the agri-sector, winning the Climate Innovation Challenge is not just a feather in our cap but a massive responsibility that we’re excited about.”
The Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC) had received close to 239 applications from around the world. This platform is said to have successfully responded to a global call driven by the resilience needs, which are noticed across the South Asian region, scalability and applicability of innovative solutions, and focusing on partnerships.
All applications went through an extensive selection process that included detailed challenge formulation, challenge call and an evaluation by an independent jury of experts. The winning innovators were selected based on both qualitative and quantitative assessment criteria to meet the needs of the countries as well as the objectives of the larger WBCAR programme. The selection process was conducted with adequate due diligence and evidenced in an objective, consistent, transparent and timely manner.
SmartFarm, Cropin’s SaaS-based agritech solution, will aim to positively impact farmers drastically in both Sri Lanka and Bangladesh by providing climate resilience practices and advisory.
CropIn’s partners
In Bangaldesh, CropIn has partnered with Oxfam, which is up to support this project implementation through its robust network of 40 partners and around 300 community-based organisations in 20 districts. The company’s network primarily involves the southwestern and northern parts of Bangladesh and covers over 30,000 farmers, especially women. Apart from promoting climate-resilient agricultural practices, Oxfam implements climate risk insurance products that can be benefited from this project.
Agrithmics (Pvt) Ltd in Sri Lanka, one of the forerunners in the agritech industry of the island nation and is backed by Dialog Axiata. The company is known to provide tech and fin-tech solutions to digitise the last-mile agriculture in Sri Lanka. Agrithmics boasts of a network of 50,000 registered farmers and operates in several parts of the country.
