Artificial intelligence has finally reached the cowshed—and not in California, but in rural Gujarat.
India’s dairy giant Amul has launched an AI-powered advisory platform aimed at 36 lakh (3.6 million) women milk producers in its network. The assistant, named Sarlaben, is designed to provide personalised, real-time dairy guidance in local languages, directly to farmers’ phones—or even via voice calls.
Behind the initiative is the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF), the apex body that markets Amul products. The platform was introduced ahead of India’s AI Impact Summit 2026 and developed with backing from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and the EkStep Foundation.
This is not a pilot experiment. It’s AI deployed at cooperative scale.
Meet Sarlaben: The AI Dairy Assistant
Sarlaben is integrated into the Amul Farmer mobile app, which already has over one million downloads across Android and iOS. Farmers using feature phones can access it through voice calls.
What sets it apart from generic agri-chatbots is its data backbone:
- Over 200 crore milk procurement transactions annually
- Veterinary treatment records from 1,200+ doctors covering nearly 3 crore cattle
- Around 70 lakh artificial inseminations per year
- ISRO satellite imagery for fodder mapping
- Individual cattle IDs with feed, disease, and production history
In short: this is AI trained not on abstract datasets, but on decades of real cooperative operations.
According to Amul’s Managing Director Jayen Mehta, the objective is simple—convert structured historical data into actionable advice that farmers can use instantly.
India’s Dairy Paradox
India is the world’s largest milk producer, generating 347.87 million tonnes in 2024–25—more than double the US output. Yet per-animal productivity remains comparatively low.
The reasons are well known:
- Small herd sizes
- Limited access to veterinary care
- Poor-quality feed
- Lack of awareness of modern breeding practices
Amul’s network spans more than 18,600 villages in Gujarat alone, collecting roughly 35 million litres of milk daily. But information gaps—especially in remote areas—have historically limited productivity improvements.
If a farmer’s animal falls sick at midnight, guidance is often unavailable. Sarlaben is meant to close that gap.
Language as Infrastructure
The platform currently operates in Gujarati and is built on the government’s Bhashini multilingual framework, allowing expansion into multiple Indian languages. That matters.
As dairy-tech entrepreneur Sreeshankar Nair notes, vernacular AI could trigger “White Revolution 2.0” if local dialect integration succeeds. Agriculture is not English-speaking. Technology must adapt accordingly.
Cooperative DNA Makes It Possible
Most agri-tech startups struggle with data scarcity. Amul has the opposite problem—it has had structured data for decades but lacked a real-time AI interface.
The cooperative model built during India’s original White Revolution created the infrastructure: consistent procurement systems, digitised milk collection (AMCS), veterinary records, cattle census data.
Saswata Narayan Biswas of the Institute of Rural Management, Anand views the initiative not as a tech upgrade but as an instrument of rural transformation embedded in cooperative governance.
AI now enables:
- Predictive disease alerts
- Oestrus tracking
- Optimised feed formulation
- Localised weather advisories
Capabilities that previously existed in fragments are now unified and scalable.
The Real Test
At current scale, Amul AI already covers nearly 30 million cattle—more than many national veterinary databases globally.
Read More: The Rise of ‘Modern Indian Dairy’: Tradition Meets Transparency
But the hardest part isn’t launching AI. It’s ensuring adoption by farmers who:
- Use feature phones instead of smartphones
- Have limited digital literacy
- Face inconsistent connectivity
If voice-based systems gain traction, if dialect expansion works, and if measurable milk yield improvements follow, then this could indeed be a second White Revolution.
If not, it risks becoming another well-intentioned tech showcase.
Bottom Line
Amul didn’t build AI from scratch. It built AI on 50 years of cooperative trust, transactions, and farmer relationships.
That foundation gives it credibility few agri-tech platforms can match.
The question now is execution. If Sarlaben can consistently reach the last mile—the farmer in the remotest village, at the exact moment guidance is needed—then India may not just remain the largest milk producer in the world.
It may finally solve its productivity paradox.
Join Our “Dairy & Food Jobs Updates” WhatsApp group
Follow the Agri Jobs Updates channel on WhatsApp:
Disclaimer
I do my best to share reliable and well-researched insights but occasional errors or omissions may slip through. Please view all content as informational.
Stay informed on all the latest news updates
All Agriculture Books Free Download
All Dairy Technology Books Free Download
All Agricultural Engineering Books Free download
All Horticulture Books Free Download
All Fisheries Science Books Free Download
For Daily Update follow us at:
Facebook Telegram Whatsapp Instagram YouTube
The contents are provided free for noncommercial purpose such as teaching, training, research, extension and self learning.
If you are facing any Problem than fill form Contact Us
If you want share any article related Agriculture with us than send at info@agrimoon.com with your contact detail.
