No more seed washed away by the monsoon

Kavya is an agronomist at a large seed company near Chennai. Thousands of rice farmers buy her seed. When a farmer sows the day before a downpour, the seed washes out, and he blames the seed. Next time he buys from someone else. Kavya’s field officers cannot call every farmer before every storm. Last season, one farm in eight had to sow twice. With xMap Flows, Kavya built Willow. When a farmer’s seed order lands in the sheet, Willow checks the next seven days at that farm, and if heavy rain is coming, tells the farmer to hold the seed a few days, or, if the week looks dry, tells him it is a good week to sow. In October, as the monsoon arrives, Willow tells two thousand farmers around Tiruvallur to wait four days. The rain comes and goes, and they sow on settled ground. Farms sowing twice fall from one in eight to one in fifty. Kavya’s seed didn’t change. It just started arriving with the forecast.

The story in words