© Shailesh Vickram Singh
2 Ideas for the future
Talk delivered at “Acumen Fund – Ideas for the future Word”
Shailesh Vickram Singh
twitter : @svickramblog : fringenotes.in
© Shailesh Vickram Singh
Idea 1: Near Term
© Shailesh Vickram Singh
Crop Cultivation Forecasting Models
© Shailesh Vickram Singh
Increasing population and climate change will create more food price shocks in time to come. However this food price shocks instead of impacting income of marginal farmer in positive way, will further destabilize them. This will create serious challenges for Govt., Policy makers!
© Shailesh Vickram Singh
Agriculture commodity price scenario
• Tahir Square / Arab spring started with rising cost of bread
• In 1999 and 2013, Delhi state govt lost state election because of rising vegetable prices
• Despite all intentions and strategy, Governments have failed to predict or manage agriculture commodity price shocks as govt present strategy on price control is more of a knee jerk reaction than any strategy
© Shailesh Vickram Singh
Cultivators : Forever disadvantaged
Despite rising cost of agriculture commodities, farmers are not able to reap benefits as their behavior is very similar to small retail investor in share market
• Sell before price rise ~ Crop prices generally rise after 2/3 months of post harvest, while farmers generally sell crop immediately post harvest without any knowledge of demand supply situation
• Wrong crop selection : use past data ( past high prices) to grow crop thus resulting in glut or shortage in a very cyclical fashion
© Shailesh Vickram Singh
Mis Placed Focus : Post Harvest vs Crop Selection
• Unfortunately rising price is always attributed to post harvest phenomenon i.e. lack of storage / supply chain / stocking and weather (storage of food grain doesn’t work as cost of new food supply is lower than cost of stored food supply on account of better road network and even weather cycles. This phenomenon removes any economic incentive for storage of food supply)
• While the problem is more related to crop selection and related to pre cultivation i.e more of supply related
© Shailesh Vickram Singh
Opportunity
Data i.Crop pattern and cultivation data available (Remote Sensing)
ii.Better weather data prediction tools
iii.Advance knowledge on outbreak of disease as well as data on better yielding crops
iv.Irrigation pattern data
v.Availability of price movements as well as crop performance data across region and globally
Delivery
i.Cheaper smart phones
ii.Coverage of 3G and upcoming 4G networks
© Shailesh Vickram Singh
Impact
119 million Cultivators in India alone
© Shailesh Vickram Singh
Secret sauce
• Data, data and data with ability to weave pattern from existing data points to predict future price behavior based on supply / production data
• Mobile focus
• Vernacular product to cater to rural population
© Shailesh Vickram Singh
Idea 2 : Future Shot
© Shailesh Vickram Singh
Water world : 2025
© Shailesh Vickram Singh
Country of Billons
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With vast network of rivers
© Shailesh Vickram Singh
which has reduced to
© Shailesh Vickram Singh
Further Challenges to water
• Domestic RO plants – waste 20 liter of potable water to produce one liter of drinking water – 700 liters drained every day per house hold ~ 1 million household in Delhi with RO plant, waste 700 million liter
• Declining ground water – borewells banned in most part of country and every year water table declining sharply
© Shailesh Vickram Singh
Future or Nightmare crawling towards us!!!
© Shailesh Vickram Singh
Opportunity
Next war is going to be fought for water
© Shailesh Vickram Singh
Opportunity / Road ahead
New paradigm needed to think about water solutions. Existing solutions are creating more stress ( RO plants, filtration plants, bacteria led solutions etc) than creating viable options. Hence it needs policy intervention as well as private innovation to bring bigger impact
© Shailesh Vickram Singh
Thank You
Shailesh Vickram Singh t ~ @svickram
w ~ fringenotes.in