In Startup50 2016: For building innovative applications using Internet of Things (IoT) & Big Data to improve efficiency in a very unique sector – agri and dairy supply chain, and is expected to touch Rs. 37 crore in revenue this fiscal. 

Founders: Ranjith Mukundan, Ravi G. Shiroor, Ramakrishna Adukuri, Praveen Nale, Venkatesh Seshasayee

Bangalore-based Stellapps Technologies leverage Internet of Things (IoT) and Big Data to improve agri-dairy supply chain parameters, including milk production, milk procurement, cold chain, animal insurance and farmer payments.

Funded by friends and family, IIT Madras, Omnivore Partners and Caspian Impact fund, the company’s revenues grew from less than Rs 1 crore in 2014 to Rs 8.35 crore in 2016 and has a 115-strong team.

Key Metrics

The company has projected revenues of Rs 37.70 crore this year and expects to touch 14,76,364 farmers in 2017-18 from 1,40,000 in 2015-16; cattle11,47,556 from the current 1,08,820; and milk (in litres) up to 10208,16,090 from 9,68,01,526.

In terms of customers, including private and government dairy companies and big, medium and small dairy farmers, it has grown from 12 in 2012-13 to 67 in 2015-16 and touch 82 by 2018-19.

Strengths

The model Stellapps follows not only creates value for customers (dairy companies), but also has social impact on end customers (dairy farmers) with better earnings and returns.The company acquiring data across the dairy supply chain via sensors bundled with automation equipment using an IoT architecture and applying machine learning and analytics on the acquired data in the Cloud using the SmartMoo™ smart service delivery platform (SDP). Using this platform, the following applications/solutions have been deployed:

– SmartFarms™: Improving the cattle yield for small, medium & large farmers. This has been deployed across India, Kenya and Nepal including large number of farmers in south India via the largest private dairy in south East Asia.

– smartAMCU™: Provides transparent milk procurement process which automatically captures quality and quantity parameters of milk ensuring transparent payment mechanism to farmers. The solution has been deployed across most parts of India touching many large customers (Hatsun, Lactalis-Tirumala, Heritage, Haldirams etc) and many small/medium customers. This system is deployed in more than 5000 collection centers reaching more than two lakh farmers.

– ConTrak™: Provides near real time monitoring and management of cold chain for improved operational efficiency which reduces operational costs and improves milk quality with energy efficiency. It has been deployed in more than 100 chilling centers of India.

The company plans to charge some capex to recover the base costs of the deployment equipment/hardware and charge recurring pay-as-you-grow fees for the cloud / mobility services. For instance, it currently charges per-litre of milk (or per animal) for its SmartFarm™ solution, per-collection centre, per month recurring charges for the smartAMCU solution and recurring monitoring services charge for the milk cold-chain solution (ConTrak). Some of these costs are bundled with ongoing Annual Maintenance Costs (AMCs) and sometime modelled as Rental Costs (in full managed services scenario).

These applications help improve yield with clean milk production in a scientific way for dairy farmers. With this suite of technology applications, the entire dairy supply chain is benefitted and hence eventually it creates a direct impact on better earnings for dairy farmers where women play a major role.