Wearables for cows: How Stellapps Technologies is ‘Milking’ its way to success
If you thought wearables only consists of smartwatches, fitness trackers, clothes, jewellery and only meant for humans, then think again. Combining terms like Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, data analytics and wearables, Stellapps Technologies is India’s first company to take the power of technology to the dairy sector.
Targeted for a wide-range of customers including dairy farmers, cooperatives, milk unions, private dairies, and dairy equipment manufacturers, the innovative applications of Stellapps Technologies leverages technology to improve agri-supply chain parameters, including milk production, procurement, cold chain, animal insurance and farmer payments.
India is the largest consumer of milk, but the techniques used in dairy are steeped in the past. Consider this data from research firm Grant Thornton – with a cow population of 45 million (115 million if we include buffalo), 75 million farms (this includes buffalo), the average per cow (tons/year) is only 1.2. India has the highest number of farms and cows in the world, but some of the worst productivity levels. Stellapps is looking to change that.
Incubated at IIT-Madras, the startup is co-founded by Ranjith Mukundan (CEO), Ravishankar G. Shiroor (Business Development Head), Praveen Nale (Chief Technology Officer), Ramakrishna Adukuri (Head of Software Solutions) and Venkatesh Seshasayee (Head of Domain Solutions).
Keep calm & moo
“Our Smart Moo IoT router and in-premise IoT Controller acquire data via sensors that are embedded in milking systems, animal wearables, milk chilling equipment and milk procurement peripherals, and transmit the same to the Stellapps Smart Moo Big Data Cloud Service Delivery Platform (SDP) where data are analyzed and crunched before disseminating the analytics and data science outcome to various stakeholders,” explains Mukundan.
The founders were in discussions for many years to explore entrepreneurship – while working together at their previous company, Wipro. Around 2010-11 wireless machine-to-machine (M2M) – more popular today as IoT, was emerging as a disruptive technology and they figured that it was the right time to use this technology to solve problems across verticals and that they could potentially build out a global IoT platform. After a quick desktop research, they shortlisted three verticals to go after – Healthcare, Telematics and Agri.
Source: DAIRY NEWS OF INDIA