By Sachin Murdeshwar
Mumbai: World Bank’s Global Index Insurance Facility (GIIF) hosted the Agriculture Insuretech Innovation Challenge in association with Sankalp Forum, an initiative of Intellecap Advisory Services. The Grand challenge was held on 8th-9th of July in Mumbai and saw world’s most promising agriculture insure tech entrepreneurs showcasing their business to investors, corporates, 
DFIs and policy makers.
A total of 106 applications from 16 countries were received and shortlisted 21 finalists presented their innovative business propositions.
MoooFarm, an innovative agri-tech start-up bagged a winning price of USD 30,000 by World Bank group in Data Analytics category for their unique solution of ’Facial Recognition of cattle’.
With an accuracy of 95.7%, MoooFarm was able to test the facial recognition model using deep learning technology. In the coming weeks, this breakthrough technology will reach each and every small-holder farmer via MoooFarm’s mobile based application and its network of Village level Entrepreneurs.
As per the latest census, India has the largest cattle inventory with over 300 million cattle but the number of cattle insured is less than 10%. For the insurers, the volume of business derived from livestock insurance (less than 1%) doesn’t justify the high cost of entering rural livestock market. Further, insufficient data availability impacts the design of cattle insurance products.
The challenge is further amplified by the claim settlement frauds of valuation and identification of cattle due to poor monitoring process and negligible use of technology. MoooFarm is solving these issues by using facial recognition of the cattle through its mobile app.
“MoooFarm plans to use this money to develop more of such emerging technologies to disrupt the dairy industry and bringing about white tech revolution in India” says Param Singh Founder MoooFarm
MoooFarm collects geography specific data for each farm and cattle through its app against breed, diseases, antibiotics given, yield, critical events such as successful calving and heat symptoms. By leveraging big data analytics, it allows for enhanced visibility of unique patterns and assists in predicting each cattle’s mortality rate.
The cattle record is compared against other cattle in the same breed to allow for accurate valuation of its market price giving it the true basis of sum assured and premium calculation which will encourage farmers to insure their cattle. The facial recognition technology will also control cattle claim settlement frauds and track ownership of stray cattle which has become a big nuisance. It can also solve the issue of cattle smuggling which is a pressing issue of the current times.