Deadline: 8-Jun-22
Applications are now open for the Smart farm Grant Challenge, a program to identify impactful solutions from start-ups to address the problem statements identified for sugarcane harvest.
Sugarcane yield depends on various factors such as cane variety, climatic condition, time of harvest, supply chain etc. Sucrose losses after harvest of cane due to delayed transport and unfavourable environmental conditions are one of the most serious problems in sugar recovery process.
Sugarcane is a perishable commodity and need to be processed in to sugar quickly after it is harvested. Studies have indicated that nearly 20-30% of total sucrose synthesized by sugarcane plant is lost during various stages of raw material handling and sugar mill processing.
Considering the above facts, the STPI announces the Smart-farm Grant Challenge for Development of a “Digital solution to predict optimum time of sugarcane harvest”.
Eligibility Criteria
- The Indian Tech start-ups, MSMEs, Companies, LLPs registered in India under Companies Act can apply. The entity must have 51% or more shareholding with Indian citizen or person of Indian origin. The applicant’s entity should not be a subsidiary company of any foreign corporation.
- To encourage participation from academia and industry, participating teams are not mandatorily required to be registered Indian Companies / startups / MSMEs/ LLPs to apply for the Smart-farm Grant Challenge. However, the 4 teams shortlisted at Ideation Stage will be required to apply for registration as Indian Startups/ Company/ MSMEs/ LLPs and submit the proof of having applied at stage of submission of Prototype.
- It will be expected that by the time of selection at the final stage, necessary registration will be completed. It may be noted that funds will be transferred only in the bank accounts of Startups/Company / MSMEs / LLPs and not in the bank accounts of individuals.
Selection Process
The Smart-farm Grant Challenge would be in three (3) stages:
- Ideation (Stage-1): Teams will have to propose their innovative and cutting-edge ideas of their solution. Shortlisted 25 teams will be asked to make a presentation to Jury. Based on the recommendations of Jury, Top ten (10) teams would be selected from this stage and provided financial support to the tune of INR 5 Lakh each to develop a working prototype of the proposed solution within three months duration (max). In this stage, the shortlisted team is expected to complete data acquisition and development of algorithm. The results of the developed algorithm should be validated with the lab experiment/ ground truth to establish the percentage of accuracy of the developed algorithm.
- Prototype (Stage-2): This is the critical phase of the Smart-farm Grant Challenge to build upon the idea and mature the prototype. The shortlisted entries from Stage-1 will get a chance to present their prototypes to a distinguished Jury. Top four (4) teams will be shortlisted for the Final Stage. These four (4) techno-economically viable prototypes shall be selected for product development and each team will receive funding of INR 20 Lakh to build their solution as per the need of the user agency (DCM Shriram Sugar Mills) within six months duration (max). These Four (4) winning teams will also get a chance to deploy a fully functioning product based on their working prototype on Government approved Cloud Environment, provided by CSPs empaneled by MeitY and subsequently field trial, testing, deployment and demonstration of results/ predictions at approx. 500 acres. plot areas in the radius of 30-35 Km from the DCM Shriram Sugar Mill Located in Loni, Hardoi, and Shahjahanpur, Uttar Pradesh.
- Solution Building (Final Stage): The prototype of the four (4) winning teams of Stage-2 will be presented to the Jury. The solutions would be evaluated based on parameters that will include but not limited to Innovation, Replicability, Scalability, Usability, Ease of deployment/roll-out, Potential risks involved in implementation of the solution, accuracy in percentage, correlation with the real time data etc.
- The winning team with the best-judged solution will get a contract to deploy their solution for use by Government of India, State Government entities, Government sugar mills for a period of 3 years and will also be given fixed amount of INR 50 Lakh in the first year and further support of INR 10 lakhs per year for next 2 years after the first year towards Operation & Maintenance of the solution for the Government and dissemination advisory to farmers for next two years.
For more information, visit https://innovate.stpinext.in/about-us/smart_farm
