Dealflow | October 7, 2020

Krishitantra secures seed funding to monitor India’s soil health

Jessica Pothering
ImpactAlpha Editor

Jessica Pothering

ImpactAlpha, October 7 – Krishitantra’s Sandeep Kondaji was frustrated in getting timely soil data to help his uncle make decisions around fertilizer use on his farm. Kondaji launched Krishitantra in 2017 to develop a portable device to enable farmers to do rapid soil testing and avoid costly overuse of chemical treatments. 

The Mangalore-based company has raised $1 million from NAB Ventures and Omnivore to grow sales of its testing equipment and data analysis for farming collectives, agribusiness companies and other labs. 

Most soil tests measure only inorganic compounds like boron and sulfur. Krishitantra provides data on organic soil composition as well. 

“If you want to protect the soil, you have to protect the living things in the soil,” Kondaji told ImpactAlpha. 

Krishitantra’s device can return soil analysis results within 30 minutes. By comparison, he says he sent a soil sample from his uncle’s farm to a government-run laboratory 2016. “I still have not received the results,” he says.