Insights

Amidst a power-packed audience and much celebrity fanfare, which included the nation’s leaders in technology including Google, Cisco, SAP, Adobe, and TCS, the Financial Express honored ThoughtFocus with the prestigious silver innovation award for its work in the IT Mobility space for an IoT solution that has transformed the milk collection process in the dairy industry. Over 317 entries from leading technology companies were evaluated.

The innovative solution connected rural milk collection centers to the dairy’s head offices over a wireless network, allowing real-time decisions to be made based on live data on milk quality, quantity, and a number of other parameters, all collected without manual intervention. Prior to this solution, the dairies had very little control in maintaining or improving milk quality. Now they can manage, track, and analyze the milk production history of individual farmers and incentivize them to improve. Real-time information on the milk collection has also enabled dairies to control pilferage and adulteration, which has traditionally been a huge problem and disconnect between the dairy and the farmer.

In the past, manual paper-based data processed centrally, introduced a lag of 2-3 days and associated human errors. With ThoughtFocus’ solution, the data is processed real-time. Reliable field information, combined with an integrated banking facility for money transfer, allows the farmers to see money in their account within minutes of supply, as opposed to 15 to 30 days traditionally.

The solution addresses many of the challenges of the dairy industry, including assets distributed in wide geography with limited connectivity, remote asset monitoring, managing purchase rates, and detecting fraudulent practices.

ThoughtFocus’ key to commercial success has been the ‘software as a service’ model. There are no upfront IT investments for the dairies; they pay for what they use. The costs per use are low enough to not burden the low-value transactions of milk collection.

ThoughtFocus offers similar IoT solutions in municipal water distribution and energy loss management in electrical pumps.

About Express IT Awards
The Express I.T. Awards, an initiative of The Financial Express, honor companies every year for solutions at the cutting edge of technology that have created a tangible commercial impact on the society. The awards recognize and reward IT initiatives that have enabled businesses to go the extra degree and have had a positive impact on the community at large. Embodying the Indian Express Group’s spirit of excellence and credibility, the Express I.T. Award nominations undergo thorough scrutiny by the Financial Express editorial team and our Knowledge Support, PWC, to ensure that only solutions that have made a market impact are brought in front of the eminent jury comprising a panel of globally recognized innovators.

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