Yandra Haragopal, Managing Director, NABCONS
Nabcons , the consultancy arm of the National Bank for Rural and Agriculture Development (Nabard), is bringing in AI technology, GIS and open source solutions to promote sustainable agriculture and maintain water bodies in different States.
While it rolled out an AI-based hawk-eye for Tamil Nadu to help the State monitor its water bodies in and around Chennai, it is building a SaaS (software-as–a-service) model for Digitisation of Bihar State Milk Co-operative Federation Ltd (Comfed) project to design, develop, implement, and digitisation of dairy receivables of the milk farmer unions and units, according to Yandra Haragopal, Managing Director of Nabcons.
“In Kerala, we have build Kathir (previously Kerala Krishi Hub), which an integrated digital agriculture platform to enhance various aspects of farmers and the department. It is designed to assist the entire agricultural ecosystem, including farmers, departments, vendors, and surveyors,” he said.
Detect encroachments
The Tamil Nadu Single Window for Integrated Waterbody Protection provides a real-time health monitoring of the waterbodies and help the authorities detect encroachments using satellite imagery and flag the violations with authorities concerned.
Built within a GIS framework, the platform provided tools to search, access, visualise, analyse and understand data for planning, assessment and sustainable management of water bodies in Chennai, he told businessline.
“It assists in monitoring water levels, especially during incidents of sudden rain and indicates potential threats to populations,” Haragopal said.
He said the firm contracted an all-time high business from diversified sectors with a value of ₹316 crore as against the target of ₹250 crore. It registered a revenue of ₹247 crore against the target of ₹195 crore, showing a growth of 25 per cent. The profit before tax stood at ₹28.66 crore.
The consultancy company is also doing a carbon credit pilot programme in the Kolar district of Karnataka in association with Rabo Bank. It is specifically aimed at small and marginal farmers in an agroforestry model.
“The goal is to help farmers monetise the carbon sequestered in their plants, as they are often unaware of this potential benefit. Rabo Bank has developed a platform called ACORN platform for this purpose,” he said.
“Unlike traditional carbon credits in the renewable sector, this framework deals with Carbon Removal Units (CRUs). These CRUs are determined using satellite images and ground truthing (verifying the claims) and are sold from Rabo Bank’s platform to global corporates. There is no secondary market for these CRUs,” he said.
Published on May 27, 2025
