Dear Friends and Students
Today I was reading an article in Japan Times-“Your dinner has an origin story and blockchain tech can help you find it”. 13 years back I was working on this idea, developed a lot of use cases, but never launched! Read the price I paid for this!
It was 26-11-2008 (13 years back), I sent a proposal to Azim Premji’s Office with the title: Global Partner Agri Platform (GPAP) - A Virtual Green Hub by Wipro. The goal is to establish Food Traceability and Agri platform facilitating farmers. Premji’s office forwarded this proposal to CTO Office. It was well-reviewed by the then CTO. I got detailed feedback, what works and what does not.
Subsequently, I moved out of Wipro and Joined Educational Institution(GVPCE). I along with few students started a start-up named “TraceablePlate” with the tagline “Track Your Food”. It was on 02-10-2011. Our goal was to develop software that can vet GAP (Good Agriculture Practices) practices & trace the farm output. When a consumer buys an apple, he/she scans QR code on the Apple, they should able to find the location of an apple where it grew, the Story of the farmer, at what conditions it was grown, which vehicle was used to transport, a number of days it was in the travel and all about the Apple history.
We submitted a proposal to a start-up challenge as well. Let me quote the Student names. They should see how we all missed a great opportunity as a team: G.N.V.Suresh, L.D.Prerana, M.Kameswari, M.Anusha, V.Sai Kiran, Swathi and Shilpa (2011-2015 Btech Students). After 1 year, students got placed in various companies. Start-up was closed.
Later, the same proposal was discussed with Mr. Nithin Gudisa, IIT Madras Alumni (2013-17 BTech Mechanical), and encouraged Nitin to start a start-up on TracablePlate. Later Nitin joined his family business as Director, Operations (SVN ShivaJyothi Group: Real Estate, Hospitality, Education, Photography).
Later again I wrote a letter on Fri, Nov 3, 2017, 2:25 PM to the ITC leadership team: S Sivakumar: Agri & IT Businesses, regarding Tractability. How ITC can invest in this tractability solution? The gist of the proposal is as follows
Food Traceability Story becomes the core USP of the product. The customer would be happy to see the following value additions when he is buying a product
1. While I am opening the packet, I love to see where these vegetables are from? Place, Process, and People involved in this.
2. I am interested to see if there are any certifications- may be soil or pesticide or organic or ISO etc
3. I am interested to see how many miles this product traveled before I grabbed it. The lesser has less embedded water - virtual water. I am happy to consume less water and save mother earth
4. I am interested to see the farmer's name, his/her story, and life while opening the packet. The story of the farmer revives glories of agriculture again!
5. I am interested to verify all these online. Hence if there is any verify app with cloud agri traceability data, it would be amazing! Real farmer gets benefits. GI tagged products get premium value! Counterfeit can be minimized in agribusiness.
Finally, Today, on 07/03/2021, I see this wonderful article on how a blockchain technology company Emurgo is implementing traceability solutions for 500 coffee farmers in Indonesia!!
My Realization: Having great ideas is no use!! Having a risk appetite is more important. I really admire Emurgo, Founder, Ken Kodama (Singapore-based company) whose company deployed this food traceability solution using Blockchain technology. Congratulations Ken!!
Please don’t do the same mistake as I did!! Having great Ideas is needed. Implementing Ideas is also equally important. Time is critical. 13 years the old idea is still a valid business case!! We lost the game!!
Think Practice!!
Your Well-wisher
Ravi Saripalle
Join Inspire to Innovate Storytelling Movement (i2itm.blogspot.com)
Source Inspiration: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2021/03/07/food/food-blockchain-app/
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