eXabit Helps In Improving Farmers Economic Condition With Their Platform, Which Consists Of RobotiX (IoT) & TactiX, Software Application For Complete Pre-harvest Tracking & Monitoring

“Jai Jawan Jai Kisan” was a slogan of our Former Prime Minister of India Lal Bahadur Shastri. But where are the Jawans and Farmers in India ? They are living the miserable life.
Now the saddest part is :
50,000 farmers from Maharastra and odisha walked 180km, asking for the rightful compensation for their crops !!!
One great Telugu saying there it was “Raithe Raju”( it means that Farmer is the only king)
Normally a farmer in India invests approx 1 lakh for crops that they have grown, at the end of selling that crops to market. There brokers will combine with market chairman’s and they lower the rate of that crops and what is the most pathetic and sorrowful situation is after their 6 months of hard-work also they don’t even get their investment what they put in.
Today we are presenting the exclusive interview of founders of eXabit Systems Private Limited. Exa-bit help in improving the farmers economic condition. For this they have a platform, which consists of RobotiX (IoT) and TactiX, software application for complete pre-harvest tracking and monitoring. Lets see how this startup is helping the feeder of the nation and helping the economic conditions of farmer and ultimately leading to better economy.
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p class=”western” lang=”en-GB”>1.What is the Name of Your Venture? Any specific reason for this name?
eXabit Systems Private Limited. Exa-bit – 10^18 bits. This translates to large volume of data that we would like to porcess or have.

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2.Who is your target Audience/clients?
Farmers, Agri Growers, Corporates, Estates, Farm Produce Organizations (FPO).
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3.Where is your venture based (city, state, country) & What are your geographical target areas?
Bangalore, Karnataka, India. As of now India, but slowly we move out side of India.
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4.What problems does your venture resolve? What are your products or services?
We help in improving the farmers economic condition. For this we have our platform, which consists of RobotiX (IoT) and TactiX, software application for complete pre-harvest tracking and monitoring.
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5.Share the idea or story behind the venture. How did it came to an existence? What motivated you to start your own venture?
During our initial years, we got one AgTech customer, during our implementation, we got a chance to interact with farmers, and they started to narrate all problems they could, thinking we are govt. representatives. We heard all problems, take a notice of it and came back. When we started to do a bit of research on these problems, we found problems are much deeper. We then started to read through a lot and tried to understand real problems. We found out, we are having challenges because of our approach. Other developed countries have moved ahead and we are lagging behind. There after we constantly worked to find a solution for these challenges, and thus we created our platform.
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6.Who are your biggest competitors and how do you differentiate yourself from them?
Agriculture has been now in focus post honorable PM push to revive it. Some of the companies have started towards this in recent past. We have our focus on to this since our inception. In India, we see Cropin as a competitor on platform. IoT is where we are differentiator. Some of other players have started post policy push; we will have a close watch on them. Outside India we see some companies in US and Israel are there, but they are more towards bigger enterprise and afford-ability becomes a challenge when we consider them. We believe we are at the sweet spot with loads of offerings.
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7.How did you identify your co-founder? Tell us some thing about your co-founder/s
We are four friends who started this venture; Amulya, Avinash, Satyjeet and Prashant. Three of us are from same college, and Avinash; we met during our initial jobs. All are from Odisha, and belong to same vicinity. All of us are engineering graduates and are good buddies since college days. After spending about 8-10 years on job we had good exposure in understand technicalities and project execution. This helps us to put our dream of doing something of our own into reality.
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8.How did you hired your first team members? What skills Do you want in your employees/team?
Our first team member was hired following a complete process of interview & written exam. We always made it a practice to get to know employees hands on experience. That gives us an idea what he is going to be on job. We believe this approach helps a lot in startup work culture.
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9.What expansion plans are you looking for the next 2 years, next 5 years?

Short term plan is to reach enterprises within India, have stronger footprint in next two years and then go global.

10.Where do you want to see yourself in next 10 years?
Our vision is to be one of the most trusted brands in AgTech. We would like to be there by 10 years time.
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11.What are your goals over the next 1, 3, 6 and 12 months?
Currently we are present in KA, KL, AP, TS, OD. We want to extend this to all of south India in coming 6 months, then be present at least in all major states by 12 months time.
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12.Have you raised any funding? Or have any plans for the funding?
Yes, we are angel funded. We got funding from one of Govt. schemes as well. These funds have helped us to reach to the level what we are now. Thanks to all those who have believed on us and are a part to our journey.
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13.What were the problems you faced during the starting days and how did you resolve them?
During the initial days, our IoT program schedule plan was not as per the time line expected. This was way too scattered. We never thought it would take so long. We then had to appraise ourselves on h/w processes and methods followed. Then we sat on the issues and timeline management to bring it to an expected lines. Today, though we know what roughly an estimate could be, still we factor in all other uncertainties to come up with time line; so that we commit correctly to customers.
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14.What was the most challenging part of your journey till now? How did you overcome those challenges?
Our trials with initial customers, where we did an implementation, we had to prove an agronomist about the parameters values captured by our sensors. While explaining the benefits, the agronomist started arguing about the parameters and he went on to make us believe that, he could sense, soil moisture content by holding the soil in his fist. This was one of the most funny yet challenging situation, where we had to make an agronomist understand the importance of sensors and it’s monitoring aspects. We did a live experiment to win over the argument.

Another challenge is how to manage the payments, usually it never happens that the payments come in time. Initially we thought it would be straight forward, but that was never the case. Payments from customers get delayed and at times it gets delayed by 6 months. So you need to plan accordingly. This was another learning that we got.

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15.Are you married, single or in a relationship?
All founders are Married
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16.What are your hobbies? What do you do in your non-work time?
I like photography, cooking, and like outdoor games and sports. Whenever time permits I plan for that. Now I get to read a lot on AgTech, Data Analysis, future tech.
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17.Whats your favorite food & holiday destination?
I like street food a lot, and sea food being favorite along with sweets, holiday destination would be anywhere near sea, preferable little cold place.
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18.Whom do you consider your idol or biggest motivator?

I consider my grandfather as my idol, he was a very much disciplined person. Currently, I get inspired by Elon Musk, what ever he has built or done, take a lot of hard-work and perseverance.

19.What do you feel is the major difference between entrepreneurs and those who work for someone else?
When compared with others I feel, there are two kinds, one who follow instructions and do it, other kind being creating new path or way to do things. This is the major difference.
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20.If you had the chance to start your career over again, what would you do differently?
First of all it would be very difficult to start over again. But if I go through that, then I would really ask for freedom to do things my way, keeping the goal in mind.
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21.How has being an entrepreneur affected your family & Social life?
You get disconnected at times, as a lot of thought goes into what you do. With time constraint, you start pushing your self and this automatically brings negligence to family and social life. It takes some time to get it right, but again it depends upon individuals as well how to manage it and sail across this. This at times may take a toll too.
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22.Anything, you would like to say to our readers or upcoming entrepreneurs?
My advise to budding entrepreneurs is to do things right. You may be doing it differently, but do right things. Keeping that in mind, all others things would fall in place during the course. And think always for longer term than short term. That is how you create great leaders and you set examples.
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23.Tell us something about your education & family background.
I completed my B.Tech Computer science from a private college ITER, Bhubaneswar. Family includes parents, brother and sister. Come from a suburb near about 30 Kms from Bhubaneswar. We have some land where farming is done which my father takes care.

Amulya – BE Electronics and Communication ITER, Comes form Puri, Odisha.

Aviansh – BE Comp. Science – NIST, comes from Jatni, Khurda, Odisha

Satyajeet – BE comp Sceince, ITER, from Bhubaneswar.

All founder have similar story, some way or other we are very close to agriculture or business side of things. Which gives us comfortability factor for AgTech as a business.

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24.What is your USP which makes it unique & different from other start-ups in similar domains.
We provide a complete end to end AgTech platfrom, from seed to fork. We have IoT device which captures climatic data and this helps in crop management. Other modules help in completing the crop management. Post harvest solutions help in completing the cycle.
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25. What do you think is the biggest threat to the success of small businesses & Start-ups today?
For startups, we believe bigger and well established companies are a threat. These companies have the reach, even they may not what a startup is offering, they have a easier path to crack the deal because of the brand. This is where startups struggle. Our urge would be to have faith in startups, do give them a chance to prove their point. This may not be a pain in longer run, rather it can be a differentiator to your business all together.
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26. Do you consider yourself successful and by what means do you measure success?
Success for us is to give it back to the society. In this journey, you may have many achievements which can be a means to measure, but the larger goal has to be met. Creating a company, giving employment to 100s of people, solving the problems that you find. These are things which makes us feel successful. In a long term vision, we all are responsible to take this vision forward. If we embark this to each of our employees then we would feel we are successful.
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27.Please share complete name, address, phone number, email id & website of Your Business & Contact Person

Name : eXabit Systems Private Limited

Address : 126, Gokul Mansion, Hoodi Main Road, Ayyapa Nagar, KR Puram, Bangalore 560036.

Ph – +91-9916394900, 080-65470043

Email – [email protected], [email protected]

Website – www.exabit.in