Tuesday Jan 20, 2026
Tuesday Jan 20, 2026
Tuesday, 20 January 2026 03:26 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
Permia Sensing Lanka CTO Dr. Hasitha Wegiriya and CEO Efrem De Paiva with the award
Permia Sensing, a precision agriculture company using AI, bioacoustics sensing and aerial image to protect and increase yields in coconut, oil palm and dates, has been named a winner of the UAE FoodTech Challenge 2026 at Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week held recently.
Permia Sensing was selected from an initial pool of 1,215 submissions across 113 countries, progressing through the Challenge’s competitive stages to reach the final round, where 10 finalists presented live pitches to an international judging panel. Each of the four winning companies receives $ 500,000
as part of a $ 2 million prize package, alongside support to pilot and scale solutions in the UAE and across priority markets in the Global South.
Permia Sensing CTO and Co-founder Dr. Hasitha Wegiriya said: “Winning this Challenge is gratifying, but it’s also a responsibility. Across the Global South, farming systems are under real pressure from climate volatility, water constraints, and fragile supply chains. At Permia, we focus on sensing that works in the real world, at scale, in harsh environments, with messy data and imperfect connectivity. The prize helps us move faster on implementation, more field trials, faster iteration, stronger on-the-ground support, and partnerships that turn insights into action. The goal is straightforward, make food production more resilient, more efficient, and ultimately more affordable, without pretending one size fits all.”
This win has special significance in Sri Lanka, where Permia has operational teams on the ground and where two of the company’s co-founders are Sri Lankan. The company’s Sri Lanka work has helped transform local research and field experience into practical, exportable technology designed for the realities of the Global South.
Permia’s platform focuses on detecting pest, disease, and water or nutrient stress early, before visible symptoms appear. In its FoodTech Challenge winner profile, the organisers highlighted Permia’s use of AI, bioacoustics sensors and drone imaging to monitor tree health, and noted deployment at scale in Sri Lanka.
Permia’s operations in Sri Lanka create 21st-century jobs across agronomy, field operations, drone and sensor deployment, data annotation, machine learning, and customer success, helping build a modern agricultural technology workforce locally.
The company also creates wealth in Sri Lanka by improving the productivity and resilience of coconut and oil palm plantations through: Saving trees via earlier detection of pests and diseases; Reducing coconut yield loss by helping strengthen trees to avoid losing coconut flower buds; Increasing efficiency of nutrient and water application through data-driven recommendations and Improving workforce management through better visibility of field conditions and priorities.
Today, Permia covers approximately 10,000 hectares of coconut and oil palm plantations in Sri Lanka, and this footprint continues to grow. In FoodTech Challenge communications, Permia’s coverage in Sri Lanka was described at even larger scale across palm plantations.
Building on this recognition, Permia is expanding internationally, with planned growth across India, the Middle East, West Africa, and Southeast Asia, markets where coconut, date, and oil palm are strategic crops and where early detection and resource efficiency can protect livelihoods and food security at scale. The FoodTech Challenge announcement also described plans to localise and scale Permia’s solution across the Middle East.
The UAE FoodTech Challenge is a global competition designed to identify and scale high-potential agri-food technologies for hot, arid, and climate-stressed environments, where food security is most at risk. The 2026 winners were announced during Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week (11 to 15 January 2026).
