July 9, 2019; Mumbai (INDIA): The Global Index Insurance Facility (GIIF) and Sankalp Forum by Intellecap, announced the winners of Agriculture Insuretech Innovation Challenge at the Agri Insuretech Forum that took place at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai today.

Of the world’s 500 million smallholder farmers, around 400 million are in Asia. The region is home to some of the world’s most climate-exposed territories and has been disproportionately hit by the effects of climate change, and farmers are suffering from crop failures that can threaten their economic livelihood. The Global Index Insurance Facility (GIIF) at the World Bank Group is supporting farmers and micro-entrepreneurs gain better access to finance and manage financial losses arising from frequent and severe weather events.

Fatou Assah, GIIF Program Manager, said: “The World Bank Group is committed to promoting agriculture insurance for smallholder farmers, so they can protect themselves against more frequent and severe climate events. The adoption of Insuretech solutions helps to reach a larger number of low-income rural populations with financial products that are needed, cost-effective, transparent, and simple. I am delighted that the innovators participating in this challenge are contributing to the betterment of the rural finance ecosystem with scalable technology solutions that can be replicated in other geographies.”

GIIF invited participants from leading insurance companies, government officials from the Ministry of Agriculture, impact investors, and innovators incubators from the agriculture, technology, and insurance sectors. The platform held key panel discussions on bringing together the Agri-insuretech ecosystem stakeholders such as innovators, investors, government, academia, technology, and financial services companies to deliberate on the role that technology innovations can play in driving the design, distribution, and adoption of agricultural insurance solutions. Key government dignitaries Suhas Divase, Commissioner of Agriculture, Government of Maharashtra and Dr. Ashish Kumar Bhutani, CEO, Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, Government of India were also part of the panel discussions.

The event was closed with the announcement of the Agri Insuretech Challenge winners. The Awards recognized some of South and South-East Asia and Pacific's most promising entrepreneurs who are using technology to address challenges in providing agricultural insurance to farmers. The awards were given under three categories of an insurance product’s lifecycle -- Data & Analytics, Sales and Distribution, and Premiums & Claims. The 9 winners, selected from 24 challenge finalists and 105 applicants. They will now collaborate with GIIF to develop their solutions further to improve agricultural insurance products and their uptake, particularly in the Asia Pacific region. The nine winners are:

Data & Analytics Category:

Stellapps (Diamond Award Recipient)

Stellapps is a Bangalore-based Internet of Things (IoT) firm serving the dairy industry with core mission of “significantly increasing the income of dairy farmers by improving milk productivity, ensuring better milk quality, prices and financial inclusion” through its end-to-end dairy technology solutions.

MoooFarm (Platinum Award Recipient) 

MoooFarm is an agriculture technology (AgTech) company started in Australia with a goal to provide last mile connectivity to dairy farmers through privately led agriculture extension. Currently operational in India, MoooFarm’s A.I. powered mobile app sends real time alerts to farmers to track and monitor cattle health, breeding cycle, productivity and dairy farm performance. The app has built-in mobile camera with facial recognition feature to tag the cattle.

Niruthi (Gold Award Recipient)

Niruthi is an Agritech company that offers solutions for monitoring, modeling and forecasting crop conditions through location-specific weather, crop health and crop yields. An array of tools and technologies derived from the Terrestrial Observation and Prediction System (TOPS, developed at NASA) is employed to capture and synchronize data from satellites, mobile phones, drones and automated weather stations to enable machine learning on cloud computing platform. Niruthi provides field-level insights needed by farmers, financial institutions, insurance companies and government agencies.

Sales & Distribution Category:

ICT 4 Agri (IFA) (Diamond Award Recipient)

IFA is an agriculture technology (AgTech) company based in Nepal, providing localized agriculture extension services enabled by Information Communications Technology (ICT). Its mission is to scale digital solutions for the agricultural last mile and improve smallholder’s financial inclusion, livelihood and climate resilience.

HARA (Platinum Award Recipient) 

HARA is an agriculture technology (Agtech) startup from Indonesia implementing an innovative way to collect and digitalize usually hard-to-acquire data such as information on farmers and their farm characteristics along with local weather to enable financial inclusion. At its essence, HARA is a tech firm creating a mutually beneficial data exchange platform supported by Blockchain, immutable data recording technology. HARA’s data collection mechanism rooted in a robust incentive for high data quality and field engagement equips rural youth with technology to become “Agripreneurs” to serve the last mile.  

HF Mlog (Gold Award Recipient)

HF-MLOG is a meteorological big data company jointly established by Huafeng group (HF) under China Meteorological Administration and MLOG group. HF-MLOG has established strategic partnerships with scientific research institutions such as the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and China Agricultural University to share key agricultural data and technologies to advance modeling in the agriculture sector with a focus on insurance.

Premiums & Claims Category:

Gramcover (Diamond Award Recipient)

GramCover is a digital insurance platform company that co-creates, with insurers, simple and easy to understand insurance products at affordable price points and uses its technology platform to deliver these products to the rural Indian population to mitigate their production risks. Currently the company is exploring and refining Blockchain application in insurance to better serve farmers.

Aquaconnect (Platinum Award Recipient) 

Aquaconnect is an agriculture technology (AgTech) company serving the aquaculture sector. It has developed FarmMOJO – an Artificial Intelligence powered farm advisor tool which connects shrimp farmers with up-streams (inputs and healthcare) and down-streams (processors and certifying bodies) in the shrimp supply chain as well as providing essential data to financial institutions to enable services for credit and insurance.

Dhwani RIS (Gold Award Recipient)

Dhwani Rural Information Systems (Dhwani RIS) is a development-oriented technology enterprise that provides intelligent, integrated and affordable solutions to help social organizations to monitor, track and streamline their work effectively. Dhwani RIS strengthens the internal capabilities of client organizations through IT services including Information Communications Technology (ICT) integration and sector-based Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E).

Through this innovation fair, the GIIF aims at improving the understanding of Insuretech, supporting the integration of different technology solutions with agriculture insurance, and applying innovation with actual programs on the ground. Click here to read more on contest details, eligibility, and selection process. Click here to watch the event highlight videos.