New Delhi: Agribusiness focused tech startup, AgNext Technologies and the Tea Research Association (TRA) have set up an AI Excellence Centre at Tea Research Institute, Jorhat.
AgNext Technologies will fully work on solving the quality quotient of the tea industry with artificial intelligence, IoT and data-driven technologies. This centre will focus on innovation, improvement and enhancement of the tea quality across the supply chain and build sustainability.
The AI Excellence Center aims to research the blend of AI, algorithms, automation and big data/analytics to build cutting edge business solutions. These solutions will help to drive the tea industry forward in global markets.
This centre will be a go-to destination for academia and industry for technical know-how, technology development and its application areas.
AgNext has also built multiple solutions for commodities like spices, grains and milk. The startup’s aim is to solve the old-age prevalent problems of the $1.65 billion tea industry with the amalgamation of computer vision, IoT and molecular science.
AgNext has already deployed a digital ballometric solution – TRAGNEXT. It determines the fine leaves count and surface moisture level of tea leaves without human intervention. And then removes the subjectivity from the quality assessment process.
At the AI Excellence Center, AgNext will work on developing the solution for multiple level quality problems from garden-to-cup. It will focus on digitizing the quality across all the midstream processes — from procurement to final processed tea through advanced technologies. Thus, aiming to reduce operational and quality losses by bringing more transparency, standardization.
“Tea industry is one of the oldest industries and has huge potential for innovations from the garden to retail. And most of the tech giants are located in metropolitan areas. That makes it difficult to understand the problems of this industry and work closely with tea stalwarts to build solutions,” said Dr Anoop Kumar Barooah, Director – Tea Research Association (TRA).
“This AI Excellence centre will be an innovation hub to bridge that gap between experimentation and mastery,” added Barooah.
“We are building strong relations with the industry to understand the grass-root problems and build solutions for them. By partnering with TRA, we are able to bring the latest innovations, build a more technologically enabled, future proof method to meet the goals of industry,” said Taranjeet Singh Bhamra, CEO and Founder – AgNext.
“We are expecting incredible changes ahead with the growing ubiquity and power of new technologies. Blending artificial intelligence, algorithms, automation and data sciences to drive the business forward,” added Bhamra.
Customer satisfaction has also become essential for AgNext to meet the ultimate business goals. AgNext has also set up its customer support department to maintain a high degree of customer satisfaction post solution deployment.
Goodricke, Rossell Tea and Bokahola Tea are among the customers of AgNext from the tea industry.