Nano Ganesh, the mobile phone application that lets farmers remotely operate their water pumps, will soon target urban water issues and diesel generators that power telecom towers.

The Pune-based firm will use wireless technology to control the devices remotely using mobile phones.

In the urban water application, users can measure water levels by calling the mobile phone embedded in the Nano Ganesh device installed in water tanks. The device would send back information.

Similarly, the device that is installed at diesel sets would help it automatically switch on and off by monitoring the power stored in invertors.

“Generally, these invertors are charged when generators work in the daytime, helping the telecom towers draw power from invertors in the night. Our application would switches it off and on, helping them save at least Rs 800 a day,” Mr Santosh Ostwal, Chief Executive Officer of Ossian Agro Automation Private Ltd, said.

Mr Santosh was here to present Nano Ganesh story at the inaugural of two-day Oracle's Java One's conference here on Thursday.

Pump set solution

The maiden Nano Ganesh, however, will need funds to scale up. The company is looking to raise Rs 7.5 crore for creating awareness and to cover the whole country. It sold 15,000 pump-set control system in five States.

“Venture capital firms are not excited as this device is used in seven months of agricultural operations. They also raise questions about scalability. However, we are in talks with some of them. We are open to infuse VC funds or low-cost debt,” he said.

Though this application can work on any mobile phone, Ossian Agro would prefer its users to go for Nokia phones as it is satisfied with latter's capacity to support the application.

“We are in talks with Nokia to explore opportunities to sell the product in a bundled form,” he said.

> kurmanath@thehindu.co.in

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW