'Krishi Sakha' app launched to meet specific needs of Farmers

Kolkata: Bharti AXA General Insurance, a joint venture between Bharti Enterprises, one of India’s leading business groups, and AXA, one of the world’s largest insurance companies, has launched its new app ‘Krishi Sakha’ to cater to the specific needs of the farmers in the country and guide them in adopting best farming practices and enhancing productivity.

Bharti AXA ‘Krishi Sakha’ aims at helping Indian farmers make informed decisions through customized information related to their farming requirements. It shares relevant information about the scientific way of farming, crop cultivation, sowing, or harvesting of a major crops.

The novel farmer-friendly app is a one-stop shop for all crop insurance-related requirements and offers the farmers a variety of innovative and tailored solutions along with curated crop advisories by experts to help them protect their invaluable crops and increase the overall farming productivity. It guides the farmers about weather forecasting, market and crop prices and government schemes related to insurance and agriculture.

Unveiling the ‘Krishi Sakha’ App, Sanjeev Srinivasan, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Bharti AXA General Insurance, said, “This app is very convenient and useful for the farmers and farming community as it educates them, while addressing the needs and risks of the entire crop cycle from pre-sowing to harvesting and post-harvest which is replete with unpredictable fears and threats. Climate-related risks have further made crop insurance the need of the hour. We, therefore, believe that ‘Krishi Sakha’ app is going to help us further interact with our farmers, understand their concerns, and offer them customized crop insurance solutions in order to solve their farming problems and challenges.’’

Krishi Sakha app users will be offered not just important weather information for their respective crops, but will also have access to a range of other necessary information and advisories like market price of crops, land unit conversion, news about forthcoming events, crop calendar, information library for better crop cultivation, informational videos, chatbots for queries, agri-solutions, and language flexibility that would cater to their daily farming requirements. Moreover, the farmers will also have access to the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) portal for crop insurance related information.

“Krishi Sakha app is a step towards the empowerment of farmers, as it enriches their experience by facilitating seamless modern agricultural processes and practices. The feature-rich app offers required pertinent information to support the farming community suffering from crop losses or damages arising out of unforeseen events. We hope that the agriculture-friendly app will enhance their farming knowledge and productivity,’’ said Ashish Kumar Bhutani, Chief Executive Officer, PMFBY.

The option to use the app in different languages makes it more widely accessible. The new Android app ‘Krishi Sakha’ can easily be downloaded from Google play store free of cost.

‘’In today’s connected world, creating awareness is key and it is our constant endeavor to support the farmers by keeping them abreast with valuable information at all times. With increased penetration of smartphones, we all have observed amplified consumption of content through varied sources.

With the launch of this app, we aim to enable our farmers with information critical to them to take the right decisions from sowing to selling all at a singular destination – Krishi Sakha” said Alok Shukla, Senior Vice-President and Head – Agriculture and Rural Business, Bharti AXA General Insurance.

Last year, Bharti AXA General Insurance, which received a Rs. 800 crore crop insurance mandate from Maharashtra and Karnataka insuring farmers under the PMFBY, launched a campaign ‘Fasal Ka Bima Bohot Zaroori Hai’ to make farmer communities aware of the importance and relevance of crop insurance especially today.

Notably, the company has been participating in the government-sponsored crop insurance scheme for years and has insured 28.44 lakh farmers from different states namely Bihar, Karnataka, Gujarat, Jharkhand, and Maharashtra. It has secured 8.83 lakh farmers from Gujarat, Jharkhand, and Maharashtra in the financial year 2019-20 alone. Under this scheme, the company has offered crop insurance benefits to more than 3.8 lakh farmers.(UNI)