Kheyti is India’s Greenhouse-in-a-Box sustainable solution for small farmers. The company has won 1 million pounds Earthshot prize. It is among the five winners announced by the Prince of Wales, Prince William, in Boston, United States.
Earthshot prize is founded by Britain’s Prince William and dubbed the Eco Oscars and witnessed the presence of several celebrities who walked the green carpet. Kheyti won the prize in Protect and Restore Nature category which saw hundreds of entries from across the world.
Here are the five Earthshot prize winners in 2022
– Mukuru Clean Stoves tackles clean air in Kenya
– Kheyti is protecting and restoring nature in India
– The Queensland Indigenous Women Rangers Network is helping revive Australia’s oceans
– Notpla’s circular solution to waste in the United Kingdom
– The 44.01 Project in Oman is turning CO2 into rock
Kheyti is founded by Kaushik Kappagantulu and based at Secunderabad, Telagana. It helps to design, adapt and implement low-cost farming solutions that makes farmers to increase yield and predictability of produce. Further combine these technologies with end-to-end support to give farmers a seamless path towards income increase. They have developed a “Greenhouse-in-a-box” – an affordable, modular greenhouse bundled with full stack services that uses 90% less water, grows 7 times more food and gives farmers a steady dependable income.
Current status of the company – “We are currently working with 1000 farmers in 6 states of India. We have 1500 farmers enrolled in our program today and aim to reach 50,000 farmers by 2027 to revolutionize farming for smallholder farmers in India”.
It has regional offices in Secunderabad, Barwani in Madhya Pradesh and Ranchi in Jharkhand. Saumya, Sathya Raghu, Ayush Sharma, former team member Akhil, and Kaushik Kappagantula is the team at Kheyti.
They focus on design, develop and implement climate smart greenhouses that help farmers to grow 7 times more food with 90% less water. Below are 4 steps followed rigorously.
- Primary research and secondary research of three main points.
A) customer discovery B) crop discovery C) structure discovery - Brainstorming with Greenhouse experts, manufacturers, designers, and agronomists to come up with greenhouse ideas that solves major pain points of the farmers.
- Test the designs on software/simulations and install the fabricated prototypes in R&D facility to understand the issues/problems.
- Invite prospective farmers to R&D facility to get feedback on the prototypes and choose the final design based on the farmers’ feedback. Then the design goes for pilot phase.
