mKRISHI BAIF: Digital transformation in livestock services

Abstract

In today's world digital transformation is the necessity of almost every business which is in pursuit of growth, expansion, quality and sustainability. In India, at rural locations, Bharatiya Agro Industries Foundation (BAIF) provides cow and buffalo breed improvement services through Artificial Insemination (A.I.) to over 2.5 million families per year [1]. BAIF provides better breeding service through trained field agents. Agents use a register to capture the A.I. activity details, plan for each post A.I. activity and generate paper based reports. There was a need for digital solutions that could replace paper based process and implement quick data entry, auto activity planning, follow up, real time monitoring and reporting. mKRISHI BAIF a mobile based solution was developed for agents, who belong to the rural category, are less educated and are not tech savvy. This solution enabled the agents to digitize data entry and easily plan for its co-related activities. Till date, agents are using this solution for 17000+ farmers and 40000+ cattle's across 300+ villages. This paper captures the experience gained while designing the application for rural centric livestock domain, challenges faced in the process and how these were resolved.