iHarvest takes Sri Lankan agriculture to new heights

The Itechro team receiving the award at NBQSA held in Colombo recently

• Award-winning plantation digitisation platform empowers agri enterprises

iHarvest, a plantation digitisation platform developed by Sri Lankan startup Itechro Ltd., recently clinched major honours by becoming a winner at the National Best Quality Software Awards 2020 within the Industrial Agriculture Category for its achievements in digitising the plantation eco-systems and showcasing the potential it possesses as an international product. 

The revolutionary platform has been developed to address common issues faced by agricultural enterprises to create a digitally enabled plantation ecosystem by connecting each entity via a digital platform to sustainably redefine the current interactions creating value to every stakeholder in the process. 

Agriculture is an inherent part of Sri Lankan economy with over 7.5% of contribution to the economy. The recent pandemic has shown the importance of being self-sufficient whilst improving the efficiency of the industry to be globally competitive. Over years, agricultural production has continued to be labour intensive at the lower operational level, contributing to over 50% of its operating costs. 

Geographically spread workforce inherently is susceptible to workforce inefficiencies and productivity challenges. Traditional paper-based processes and management techniques aggravate the problem further due to delayed information transfer, contributing to reduced profit margins or even creating losses. 

However, the sector is of paramount importance for our country due to our reliance on tea, rubber, palm and cinnamon produce which contributes over Rs. 100 billion to GDP as revenue employing more than 1.4 million people, especially the ones who are most vulnerable. Sustainably growing the industry and serving the workforce better has been a challenge for many plantations and small holders. Though our industry experience spans many centuries, it is a fact that the technology infusion is limited specially in addressing the concerns for long term crops.  

Scan of the global opportunities per the industry research done by the company shows that the sector provides large prospects globally with about 5.8% CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) pointing to a market value of $ 1.8 billion by 2027. Furthermore, cinnamon and tea products possess a substantial growth potential to further penetrate the global market and also increase the value creation.

Improving supply chain efficiency, building stronger brand propositions, and creating customer centric products, meeting local preferences of customers are some key aspects which have earned the attention of industry leaders.

Itechro recognised the problem and has come up with their latest product, iHarvest, developed with the bold vision to create a digitally enabled plantation ecosystem. The company leadership envisages to connect each entity from trees to customers digitally making it a platform that will sustainably redefine the current interactions creating value to every stakeholder in the value stream. This broad vision is mapped into a four stage journey namely Digitalise, Engage, Transform, and Sustain. 

Product value proposition: Four stage product adoption journey

Itechro team explains that iHarvest product is built on a fundamentally different view to solve the problems in the industry through a four-stage product journey to create excellence. During the initial digitalise stage, it ensures the plantation data is digitally captured. 

This includes a vast range of data including daily field activity, workforce management, field tasks management, resource management, harvest cycle management, factory operations management and payments processing fed to an insight deriving integrated framework leading to reduction in operating costs whilst the top-line is supported through effective harvest management. Product captures data on plants, soil, climate and fields through technologies like spatial imagery supported by artificial intelligence, IoT enabled devices and digital interfaces. Next stages utilises the strong data foundation created through the digitalisation journey. Digitalise stage from the initial assessments have revealed a direct bottom line improvement of 0.5-1% by eliminating paper based processes and duplication of work. 

During engage stage the platform supports users with insight dashboards and analytics engines whilst workforce is provided insuretech and fintech products. Services such as nitrogen level, water stress, and plant stress detection will also be introduced to identify any diseases early supporting the pre-emptive management of the field. 

Building a supportive community behind the platform is another aspect. Today, the application is run supporting about a 15,000 workforce. The company believes in enriching their users with greater knowledge giving access to state-of-the-art knowhow through an edutech module planned for next release. Contributions are led through the community and expert content. 

Co-Founder and Director of the company leading the product Chamara Jayaweera said that “as technologists it is our responsibility to contribute to positively support the industry to transform”. 

“As a team, Itechro is taking efforts to derive insights through a big data platform which can support the plantations in the long run. This leads to the transformation and sustain stages of the product journey. Digitally recognising the norms in the industry which will support the planters on best ways to treat a plant to optimise the outcomes. We think at the end, the growth should be made sustainable preserving the objectives on environment, society and economy. Hence, sustain is set as our ultimate goal,” Jayaweera said.

Itechro Co-Founder and Head of Products Rusiru Malik said: “We are very encouraged by the support our partners across the supply chain are providing. We want to make the industry future proof and keep it robust in the long run. Our priority is to serve the long term crops lifecycle which is much longer than software product life cycles. Hence, Itechro’s philosophy is to create a flexible architecture which is nimble enough to adopt any new technology fast to keep the platform cutting edge.”

“Within a two-year period, iHarvest has reached Sri Lanka’s leading plantations with major customers like Watawala Plantations (Pyramid Wilmar investment), Elpitiya Plantations and Lalan Rubbers to provide the benefits of digitalisation. This has allowed us to prove the product acceptance within tea, rubber, oil palm and cinnamon,” Rusiru added. 

Planters Association of Ceylon Chairman and Elpitiya Plantations Director/CEO Bhathiya Bulumulla said “Over the past decades, we have been looking for ways to transform the traditional methods followed on the Plantations on data capturing into a technology platform. The iHarvest system developed by itechro has made this transformation dream a reality.” Today the entire field level operations at Elpitiya Plantations PLC has been fully digitalised and the cloud based solutions and mobile applications used in this system facilitate real time data capturing, improving the efficiency and accuracy of management information used by the plantation for decision making.

Itechro is in discussion for strategic alliances and introductions are made opening doors to markets such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Africa, and Europe which also provide very large market potential. 

With its latest success at the National ICT Awards – NBQSA 2020, Itechro looks forward to making a mark as an international product over the years to come. 

The award-winning Itechro team