Students of IIT Guwahati develop a Multilingual App for Farmers

AgSpert, an agri-tech start-up co-founded by the students of IIT Guwahati and alumni from NIT Silchar and Dibrugarh University at Assam have launched a multi-lingual mobile application, Ag-Speak for the farmers

The startup was co-founded by Siddhartha Bora (alumnus of NIT Silchar), Manik Mittal (student at IIT Guwahati), Akash Sharma (student at IIT Guwahati), Nitin Chauhan (student at IIT Guwahati), Dhritiman Talukdar (alumnus of Nit Silchar and Kookil Pran Goswami) and others (Dibrugarh University alumnus). 

The agri-tech start-up that is free for farmers has been introduced with the objective of optimising in-farm productivity via Artificial Intelligence, according to a press release issued by IIT, Guwahati.

‘AgSpeak’ is multilingual with an option of Assamese language and this feature is a first among all the agri-tech applications present in the market.

The application takes into account 20 primary health metrics (e.g. temperature, humidity, sunshine, soil health, etc.) to warn farmers of possible crop risks and recommend best practices to resolve concerns while improving the tools used and optimizing production. 

With a single click on the phone or device, this program can allow farmers to determine and control farming activities. 

IIT Director Prof. T G Sitharam said it is a matter of great pride that their students worked so hard to provide farmers of the country with cutting-edge technology. 

For the last three months, the application and IOT hardware have been checked on 500 farmers, two tea estates, and a specific forecast of potato bites, tea mosquito bug, and water stress in winter crops which are major problems for farmers and may cause major crop loss, if not managed in time, according to the report. 

Almost 250 farmers have been educated to take full advantage of the app's ability and its user-friendly and multilingual functionality promotes farmers' use. 

Commercial plantation farms such as tea gardens, citrus orchards, and vineyards are the principal consumers of this commodity.