Erode firm offers smart solutions for drip irrigation

The company’s mobile app controlled smart irrigation system uses IoT to provide farmers with an efficient and cost-effective solution.

The company, founded by SP Raja Kumaran, KS Nallasivam and T Kumar traces its genesis to 2008, when it developed its first mobile phone-controlled irrigation system. 

By 2012, the start-up had begun employing GPRS technology to control  irrigation in real time basis, timing the volume and frequency of irrigation in farm sizes exceeding 20-25 acres, with subdivided plots. 

The company’s irrigation systems can be controlled using a mobile phone from any part of the world. Kumaran tells us, “The level of mechanisation in India agri

culture is abysmally low. 

And international brands from the US and Israel retail their irrigation systems in the country at a high cost. For instance, if one of our controllers is priced at Rs 40,000, a competing international brand would charge Rs 1.75 lakh for a product with the same features. This is beyond the reach of an average farmer in India, which is still a nascent market for IoT based technologies.” 

Referring to one of the major pain points faced by farmers in India, Kumaran says, “In many of the rural regions, electricity is not available for more than 4 to 5 hours every day. So, the irrigation pumps need to be run judiciously. 

A smart system ensures that wastage is reduced and both water and electricity are saved, as they are in short supply. As per our calculation, using our controllers, a farmer can achieve an ROI within 1.5 years of investment.” 

Tamil Nadu and Kerala comprise 50 per cent of its market while the remaining South Indian states, Maharashtra and Gujarat make up for the rest of the market. 

In TN, the big business comes from agriculture-dependent regions like Pollachi, Udumalpet, Coimbatore, Theni and Thoothukudi. The company has recorded an annual turnover of Rs 9 cr and Kumaran intends to take this number to Rs 14 cr by the end of this fiscal. 

He says, “Our factory in Erode currently has a manufacturing capacity of 100 controllers per day. By end of this year, we want to ramp up our capacity to 150-200 controllers per day.” 

Kumaran also informs us that the Centre has been taking a keen interest in IoT based agriculture and the creation of a cloud server to record data gathered from smart, GSM-enabled irrigation pumps in a few states of South India. 

The worldwide spending on Internet of Things (IoT) security will reach $1.5 bn in 2018 - a 28 percent increase from the 2017 spending of $1.2 bn, a Gartner forecast said. Global spending on IoT security is expected to reach $3.1 bn in 2021, the report, titled “Forecast: IoT Security, Worldwide, 2018”, said. IoT-based attacks are already a reality and a recent Gartner survey found that nearly 20 per cent of organisations observed at least one IoT-based attack in the past three years.  

“In IoT initiatives, organisations often don’t have control over the source and nature of the software and hardware being utilised by smart connected devices,” said Ruggero Contu, Research Director at Gartner.  “We expect to see demand for tools and services aimed at improving discovery and asset management, software and hardware security assessment, and penetration testing,” Contu said.  

“In addition, organisations will look to increase their understanding of the implications of externalising network connectivity. These factors will be the main drivers of spending growth for the forecast period with spending on IoT security expected to reach $3.1 billion in 2021,” he added. But by 2021, Gartner predicts that regulatory compliance will become the prime influencer for IoT security uptake.