Skymet launches skAlgeo to pave way for fintech revolution

Skymet, has launched a digital platform ‘skAIgeo’ (Skymet’s new geospatial avatar,) to provide its 10 years of geospatial proprietary farm-level data repository to the public free of cost.

This digital platform paves the way for farmers to enhance crop yield and decrease crop risks. skAIgeo formulate a predictive and prescriptive business intelligence solution for banking sector that leverages Agri-alternate data for effective credit risk assessment and loan recovery. It helps the insurance sector to customize polices or programs after evaluation of crop risk assessment using different indices.

The platform aims to tap into the geospatial business valued at ₹30,000 crore, targeting 1 million farmers this year and work towards the financial inclusion of rural India. The launch is in sync with the Prime Minister’s announcement of liberalising regulations on geospatial data and maps of the country.

Jatin Singh, Founder and Managing Director of Skymet, said that they have been building its digital platform in India for providing solutions for filling the gap between banks and farmers. “The ‘digital lending solution’ provides farm score/ farmers financial health/repayment capacity using various parameters,” he said. “Skymet is using remote sensing, Geo-tagging/fencing and overlaying cadastral maps over land records which helps in land and crop identification, crop acreage, and yield forecast. This solution is being used by SBI, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, and a few Maharashtra cooperative banks.”

SkAIgeo analyzes 10 years of datasets with the help of AI/ML, geospatial technologies and data science. These scalable and free of cost geo-databases and is published on the platform for the direct consumption of students as well as Business firms including insurance, banking and agriculture firms. It is also the best platform for researchers to come and acquire knowledge about different vegetation and hydro meteorological products for wholesome India.

The platform tracks indices such as the Greenness index, Crop health index, Soil moisture index, Standard precipitation index and many more with regularly updated 15 days National, District and Sub-district (tehsil) crop data. This data will further help insurance companies to develop customized agricultural policies and programs after evaluation of crop risk assessment for various indices. It also eliminates the burden of costly claim verifications on the ground, thus enabling faster, better and accurate payouts to the insured.

The platform will also help in farm management using Asia’s largest network of IoT devices. The company has collected 1 million crop signatures PAN-INDIA with the deployment of eminent resolution crop cameras, 250-300 crop sensors, 27 lightning sensors each covering 4000-6000 km, 7000 Automatic Weather Systems and in-house drone flying capability. It also helps to maintain records of the farmers like authentic land ownership, mortgage, and irrigation details of the land for easy loan disbursements.

Skymet has already made loan disbursal to half million farmers and is now aiming to increase this number to a million by the end of this year. Many states of India have ample fertile land, water, and congenial climate for agriculture cultivation, but lack institutional agriculture credit and digitalisation. In the absence of access to structural financial support systems, millions of farmers are dependent on informal credit markets where interest goes up 2% day.

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skAIgeo will integrate decision support systems and provide organised agri lending, crop health, weather forecast and advisory services to create data for farmers who are outside the formal credit system.