About 12,000 coffee and pepper growing tribals in 658 villages the Araku Valley are using mobile-based application Livelihood 360 that keeps them in touch with the market, their cooperative body and the remaining stakeholders that are associated with their livelihood. The software is used on a pay-per use or Software-as-a-service (SaaS) model and the farmers pay a monthly fee of ₹2 for it.

Asia’s finest

The application recently won a cash prize of ₹9.79 lakhs in a global app challenge organised by Telenor in Oslo recently. Adjudged the best app in Asia among five other contenders, it was showcased at the Digital Winners conference.

“We developed the app about 18 months ago and are offering it to the tribal farmers through Nandi Foundation. Keeping in view the prevalence of low-end phones, we have devised the app in such a way that they could use it offline as well. The moment they get network, their information is synchronised with the data in the cloud,” Raghu Kanchustambham, founder and Chief Executive Officer of Concept Waves, told BusinessLine here on Wednesday.

Scaling up

He said the company will like to scale up the usage by entering into agreements with partners. “The app is crop-agnostic and can work for any crop. We see a huge opportunity to make it available for farmers growing other crops,” he said.

The firm also sells educational technologies that let academic institutions reach out to scores of students spread over different locations.

“We will seek about ₹5 crore from angel funding agencies to scale up our activities,” Raghu said.

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