Despite having water from five rivers including Cauvery and Hemavathi, farmers in Karnataka’s Mandya still faced water shortages in their fields.

Malesh T, who grew up watching his grandfather cultivate sugarcane, observed that a nearby district Kolar with low water resources still flourished with crops and had happy farmers.

He explains, “Many paddy plants need 2 crore litres of water per hectare per season. But some farmers use close to 20,000-30,000 litres. They do not have a mechanism to measure that. So, the problem never was the lack of water resources but the lack of proper irrigation techniques.”

Other than this, when a farmer uses more water than required, the farms remain flooded with water for a maximum part of the season resulting in fungal diseases and hence, more spending on disease management.

So, in 2016, he launched CultYvate, an agri-tech platform that enables farmers to look after their crops sitting at home. The technology helps them understand when to provide irrigation so the crop is not submerged in water all the time. With this, he is cutting down 40 percent of water use in farms, he says.

“Our technology helps farmers analyze the dynamic climatic conditions and plan their farm cultivation for both local and foreign crop varieties. It also helps them understand and reduce the possibility of disease and pest infestation, while also boosting the production cycle considerably,” says Malesh.

Watch how he is revolutionising the lives of farmers across the country:

Edited by Divya Sethu