Crop price prediction innovation wins ICT4D Data Jam

From L to R (Dr. Andy Jarvis, Director of the Decision and Policy Analysis Area in the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) with the winning team- Time2Sell)

Hyderabad, 14 May 2017: On 12-13^th May, the ICT4D Data Jam took place in ICRISAT’s ihub and welcomed data entrepreneurs, data analysts, IT professionals and academics – who over 48 hours put data to work to find solutions on how technology can better address the development challenges facing India, and the world, today. The three teams each won up to US$1,000 and also have a chance to get access to up to US$8,000 in donated business and consultancy services as well as membership at the newly-opened ICRISAT ihub.

Participants discussed and debated how technology and data can meet the needs of farmers and the environment, and how we can overcome common pitfalls of “tech for ag” projects. At the ICT4D Data Jam, hackers set an agriculture and environment challenge and provided with related datasets and APIs to hack solutions.

The winning team was Time2Sell, who developed a data-based innovation addressing the challenge for farmers in the high fluctuation in crop prices throughout the year. The team completed preliminary development of a price prediction API which aims to help the farmer decide when to sell, and create customized installment sales plans for farmers based on their existing loans, interests, quantity of crop, and more. Time2Sell also proposed that the service offer storage solutions to farmers who don’t have the luxury of staggering their movement of goods to market, but wish to choose an installment sales strategy. The Time2Sell proposal and API could be leveraged by already-existing rural advisory services like RML AgTech to help their customer farmers avoid price arbitrage by middlemen, and make the best sales decisions possible.

The second place was secured by team AgriBarT, who developed a dynamic group formation app that enables collective bargaining for small scale farmers. The team built a prototype to identify farmers with similar purchase requirements, demographics, geographies and historical cropping patterns. The app will empower farmers to gain benefits through bulk ordering in the shared economy.

The third place was taken by team Kalgudi, who developed a Role-Based Facet Engine. The team’s proposal combined discrete data sources to provide actionable interactions between agriculture stakeholders for socio-economic change. Their solution leverages a social platform for stakeholders across the value chain, and allows users to filter information and receive critical alerts based on their role in that value chain.

The team members of Time2Sell were Raghu Prasad Mulukoju, CTO, Our Food Pvt. Ltd, Harsh Nisar, Data Scientist, IFMR LEAD, Hari Prasath Sundaram, Consultant, Consulting AgriTech and Bala Reddy V, Co-Founder & CEO, Our Food

On winning the award, Raghu Mulukoju said, “I have to keep myself updated with the latest innovations happening in the Agri space. Events such as the ICT4D Data Jam help me to understand the innovation leads and most importantly evaluate our own innovations and feasible implementations at Our Food Pvt. Ltd. These ICT4D events bring people together, to connect and network with people at higher levels around the world with different organizations, which is a difficult opportunity otherwise.”

The ICT4D Data Jam was held in partnership with the ICT4D Conference, ICRISAT, aWhere, Global Development Analytics Group, A-M-Z Group, Digital Globe and ESRI India. The judges for the event were Rama Iyer, Senior Vice President, Strategic Alliances, T-Hub, Christian Merz, Senior Program Officer, Gates Foundation and Dr. Andy Jarvis, Director of Decision and Policy Analysis Area, International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT).

For more information on the upcoming schedule, please visit: http://www.ict4dconference.org/