Coffee with Sanjay Borkar, FarmERP Co-founder and CEO

Coffee with Sanjay Borkar, FarmERP co-founder and CEO: Borkar (LinkedIn) is the founder and CEO of the digital agriculture platform FarmERP, a farm management software designed to help farmers and agribusinesses streamline their operations.

The company offers tools for planning, monitoring, and managing farm activities, including crop planning, field mapping, and resource allocation. It also helps manage the entire supply chain to ensure traceability and provide data-driven analytics that can help farmers make informed decisions.

FarmERP recently expanded into KSA partnering with Saudi Arabian green tech company Seiyaj Tech to provide agribusiness solutions in the country, according to a press release (pdf). The goal of the partnership is to expand FarmERP’s presence in Saudi Arabia while using Seiyaj’s network to help address challenges — such as extreme weather and water scarcity — that impact the agriculture sector.

We sat down with Borkar to discuss the origins of the platform, how it can improve climate resilience across supply chains, and future expansion plans.

Edited excerpts of our conversation follow:

Enterprise: What was behind your decision to launch FarmERP?

Sanjay Borkar: My colleague Santos and I come from agricultural families. Once we completed our degree in agri-computer engineering, we got the idea to introduce technology that would help solve issues faced by agribusiness and farming sectors. When we first started, agriculture and IT were two poles apart, so it was very tough for us to prototype our product, test it, get feedback, improve, refine it, and repeat. We continued because we were passionate about solving problems for the farming industry.

E: What made you shift the businesses’ focus to sustainability and climate resilience?

SB: There are a lot of extreme climatic events around the world impacting agriculture and food production, causing USD bns of losses for the industry — an impact most felt by farmers working on a smaller scale. Food security is also currently under threat because of climatic changes, while the demand for food continues to increase.

Agriculture around the globe uses a lot of chemicals, fertilizers, and fuel so it’s a sector that emits a lot of carbon, but at the same time farming can actually help store carbon underground. Through our business we aim to use technology — as well as methods of regenerative agriculture that endorses the circular economy and farm circularity — to balance the emitted and sequestered carbon and achieve carbon neutrality.

E: Can you give a few examples of how your software can improve climate resilience across supply chains?

SB: FarmERP is crop agnostic, so it supports open farming for field crops, greenhouse farming for vegetables, hydroponics or aeroponics, and glass houses. We use AI, machine learning, and computer vision-based solutions to offer climate-smart advisory for farmers. Our tech gives advice based on crop water requirements including how to optimize water and nutrition use based on weather forecasts and includes waste management features that can help analyze how much waste is generated and how it can be reduced. The system can also be integrated with automated irrigation systems.

The tech also offers disease and pest alert and detection services allowing farmers to apply preventative measures that saves their crop. The system can also be integrated with automated irrigation systems.

E:Are there any new products or services that the company is looking to offer anytime soon?

SB: Yes. We are developing what we call an “intelligent product” which uses satellite imagery to help calculate crop health, yield forecast, and water requirements. Clients will have the option to use this service separately or integrated within the FarmERP platform. The second product we are working on involves crop scouting.

E: What role does AI play in your software design?

SB: The intelligent algorithms we built help the users get their data faster and more accurately than conventional methods. A lot of data is being generated at the farm level; you have data coming from sensors, data recorded from automated irrigation systems, and data from machinery, labor control systems or biometric devices. The collected information is processed using AI to generate insights that help the business boost its income and productivity.

E: What led you to expand into the Middle East and North Africa?

SB: The Middle East as a market is close to India, and we have immense experience working there, including in Egypt and Sudan. It’s a region with scarce water supplies, the soil is limited, the crops are limited, the weather is very harsh, and the farmers face a lot of challenges. We are also working in Africa where we have partnered with some local stakeholders.

Almost 50% of our revenue currently comes from the Middle East and we are aiming to increase that share. We work with both the private sector and the government so we are both B2B and B2G.

E:Your firm announced that it aims to expand its clientele 200% y-o-y, how does it plan to achieve that and what role will MENA play in this growth?

SB: In the UAE, we are looking to expand by almost 100% y-o-y since we have excellent know-how there, including understanding the requirements for digital transformation.

The challenges we faced there included a reliance on standard ERP systems for agriculture management, which are simpler compared to FarmERP’s products. There’s also a shortage in labor and equipment used in agriculture which farmers are forced to import from abroad at a higher cost.

E: On the financing side, how is FarmERP funded?

SB: We had one funding round in 2019 where we collected USD 1.5 mn. The other rounds were small so we considered them as basic cashflow requirements rather than funding rounds. We are looking to raise funds in 1Q 2025 to expand in the MENA region.

E:Where do you see the digital agriculture sector progressing over the next decade or so globally?

SB: Digital agriculture is a sunrise industry that has just begun. In the next 10 years, a lot of turnaround in technology and increased finance is expected. As the climate gets harsher and more unpredictable, more tech and AI will be required to solve the basic problems in agriculture. FarmERP and Farm Gyan — a new company under development that aims to have an AI-based offering — want to play a big role in this trend, which is expected to peak in the next five years.