Ossian Agro’s mobile apps A farmer friendly

Don’t be surprised by the casual demeanour of the farmers in Anand’s Sojitra, a village cluster, about 30 km east of Ahmedabad. They drive around in sedans, live in two-storeyed bungalows, chat on their mobiles, go shopping with their families to the Big Bazaar stores in Ahmedabad or Vadodara and use plastic money at the counters.

Wish them ‘how are you’ and pat comes a very positive reply— ‘maja maa’ (I am having fun). This afternoon, the excitement in the village is palpable. The farmers are all assembled at the home of one Bhavesh Patel, who just made a call from his Nokia E-75, but said nothing and hung up. “Will it come?” asks one of the villagers. We are told they are waiting for water to flow into their fields from a reservoir 10 km away. Patel has activated the pump set at the site by making the call. Now, the wait has begun.

The villagers have a new deity to worship. They call it Nano Ganesh (or small Ganesh in Gujarati). The inventor of this mobile-phone enabled gadget however named it Ganesh first and them prefixed it with ‘Nano’ after Tata Motors decided to relocate its Nano factory from Singur to Sanand, near Ahmedabad. “I thought that the farmers in Gujarat, where the product has already generated considerable demand, will like the name, and it has worked,” says Santosh Ostwal, the Pune-based founder of Ossian Agro Automation which developed the gadget that’s revolutionising irigation in farms across Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. Around 7,000 farmers are already using Nano Ganesh. Ostwal hopes his impending north India launch will take the number to one lakh in two years.

Thanks to low tariffs and handset prices, the cellphone is well penetrated in rural India. And Ostwal is taking advantage of this. Among many of the USPs of the device are its price tag at Rs 600-2,500 apiece, and ease of use. If one is using a mobile phone already, the cost will be even lower. The pumpset is conected to the device, and activated from a distance by making a call from another handset (or even a public phone) from anywhere in the world.

The idea has its roots in Ostwal’s childhood when he spent time with his grandfather, a farmer who grew oranges. His village didn’t have a television set; even electricity was a luxury. The senior Ostwal had to walk deep into his orchard late at night, with a stick and a flickering oil lamp to water the trees.

“He developed infections on his feet and had to lose one of his legs. It set me thinking whether I could do something for farmers so that they wouldn’t have to walk into the fields to water the saplings or plants,” Ostwal says. A good education helped him become an engineer and got him a job at Telco—the same firm which today makes the Nano car. He quit in the mid-eighties, and started working on his idea. 10 years later he developed a remote controlled device. By then, India was ready with software and mobile phones. Bharat was waiting.

The wait ended in Sojitra. Water flowed into the fields and farmers hugged each other. They also congratulated Ostwal who was standing by. What’s next? Ostwal says he is now working on new ideas. The mobile modem which he developed to control the pump set can be used in other useful applications too, such as alerting users when their water tanks overflow, or in case of a fire or break-in at homes.

Ostwal’s simple application is already winning him accolades the world over. Mobile handset major Nokia recognised his work at the All Innovators contest in Barcelona last year with a cash prize of $25,000 and promised to distribute his mobile application to consumers worldwide. Tata Teleservices has recently joined hands with Ostwal to market products based on his invention, across the country. What’s more, leading investors have approached him with offers for funding. Ostwal says he expects to do a business of over Rs 20 crore by 2010, up from Rs 1 crore this year.