Excerpts from interview with Mr.Srinivas Chindam – Poultry Mon

What is the Poultrymon and what are its features?

Poultry Mon is a real time remote monitoring solution for Poultry hatcheries and farms for efficient management and control of the critical conditions throughout the hatch cycle improving yield and quality. Making hatcheries and farms smarter through real time anomaly detection and predictive maintenance for increased efficiency and optimizing productivity.

What is the technology involved in developing this system?

We have used advanced and patented technologies of wireless connectivity of Internet of things (IoT), Analytics , Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data etc. platform for huge volumes of data for easy and real time traceability of Hatchery, Farms, Cold Rooms data.

What are the benefits of using this system?

By continuously monitoring the temp and Humidity in real time using PoultryMon we can improve the hatchability n quality of chicks. By correcting the defects at early times, decrease the hatch duration, can decrease the operations cost Can have better control of operations by monitoring continuously Timely actions can be taken for better profitability. Data is automatically logged so the operator can be engaged with other hatching works PoultryMon helps in reduce production costs and increase revenue

How did the idea originate?

We started our foray into IoT in manufacturing Industry as we have a family business of manufacturing Aerospace fasteners. Entry into Poultry sector was rather coincidental .Later while working with a client who also happened to have a hatchery where in there was a complete hatch loss and chicks have died due to operator negligence during night time. We realized how critical it is to monitor live stock in real time for deviations and maintain conditions throughout the hatch cycle.

The idea to have a smart management system in place where the manager can have seamless visibility of the process in real time with in his mobile and also have alert mechanisms as soon as something goes awry has originated.

What has gone into planning and developing it?

Extensive research on field by our team to understand the functionality across from farm to hatchery and the breeding cycle enabled us to identify the pain areas of the Poultry Industry as it is labor intensive and technology primitive. With the advent of niche technologies like Internet of things we could demonstrate the added value of sensors making an hatchery smarter for sensing and monitoring .To bring in connectivity and develop advanced technology which is agnostic to existing machinery in the farm was challenging . We have designed, developed product and is patent pending and we are the first company to implement IoT technology at farm level from India.

How long did it take to bring the idea to fruition?

It took us little more than a year to bring it to the market after number of trials and testing.

What were the challenges in its evolution so far?

As IoT is still in its nascent stage and evolving at a rapid pace, it was challenging for us to find expert resources in development of our hardware and also local production partner. After few iterations of design and the functionality we have standardized our offering now. The potential of disrupting Poultry sector and introducing innovation which can benefit the end farmer and can usher in improvements both in productivity and quality is what kept us going even though we are boot strapped.

What have you done to promote its use?

We are promoting through various channels and interacting directly with our customers and farmers on field. Participating in workshops, exhibiting in International Poultry Expo. We are in incubated in T-hub through T Hub we are taking help from Govt of Telangana for promotions in various Agri programs

Which type of Incubators this system is compatible with?

Our system is compatible with all the existing and new traditional Incubators irrespective of the maker

Is it easy to install and use as most of the workers are not educated?

Plug and play model allows users to easily Install. Our mobile and web apps are very user friendly

Is it useful only at the hatchery level or the benefits can be extended to farm level?

Yes, the chicks produced by maintaining optimal parameters throughout the cycle of incubation are of much higher quality and less prone to abnormalities.

Who are your clients?
Below are few of our Customer across Hatchery, Farms and Cold Rooms:

• Suguna Foods – TN
• Shivshakti Agro India Ltd – WB
• Lotus Farms – Karnataka
• Janaki Group (Vimala) – TS
• Lakshmi Sarada – AP
• Vijayanagar Hatcheries – AP
• Diamond Hatcheries – TS
• GBR Hatcheries – AP
• JRB Hatcheries- TS
• Mahalakshmi Poultry – AP
• SRKR & SKR Poultry – AP
• Sundaramma Poultry – AP
• Shiva Shanker Poultry – AP
• Bhagyalakshmi Poultry – AP

What challenges lie ahead ?

Creating awareness about the technology , accepting and implementing into livestock environment as it is extremely sensitive to make the production more progressive is possible through educating the customers about benefits of how it can effectively increase the efficiency and quality of bird or egg.

How is it impacting in small towns and rural areas?

Poultrymon has the potential to bring in paradigm shift in this Industry by drastically improving productivity and sustainability, it can be used to optimize the quality of meat while reducing the possibilities of fraud through enhancing traceability. Our objective is to deliver technologies that fit the entire value chain from farm to fork reinforcing and empowering farmers with yield improvement there by increasing revenues and strengthening them for the challenges ahead by having better visibility and control.

ABOUT POULTRY MON

MLIT solutions an company which has been in R&D for since last 4years on the development of automated wireless monitoring system for all the critical parameters which are involved in the hatching process for the poultry .Apart from monitoring the parameters it senses the deviations or failures of conditions like temperature, humidity, CO2 etc. Which are involved in the incubation process. It will regularly monitor the process of the incubation system in real time and gives us the alerts if any abnormal function is occurred.

Our IoT POULTRY MON is a real time remote monitoring solution for Poultry hatcheries, farms, Cold Rooms etc. for efficient management of the critical conditions throughout the hatch cycle improving yield and quality. Making hatcheries and farms smarter through real time anomaly detection and predictive maintenance for increased efficiency and optimizing productivity.

We started our foray into IoT in manufacturing Industry as we have a family business of manufacturing Aerospace fasteners. Entry into Poultry sector was rather coincidental .Later while working with a client who also happened to have a hatchery where in there was a complete hatch loss and chicks have died due to operator negligence during night time. We realized how critical it is to monitor live stock in real time for deviations and maintain conditions throughout the hatch cycle. The idea to have a smart management system in place where the manager can have seamless visibility of the process in real time with in his mobile and also have alert mechanisms as soon as something goes awry has originated.

Poultry industry lacks technology adoption resulting in lack of Real time visibility into operations and efficiency management.

Production loss due to manual process. Inaccurate data acquisition, Dependency on labor, Downtime, Maintenance of optimal conditions, Productivity loss because of condition fluctuations.

As you know from day to day the genetical potentiality of the bird is increasing the researches are going on from the Genetic Breeding companies. The Breeder birds are getting more weight and the hatching egg sizes are gradually increasing from year to year. So for these our normal setters and hatchers will not perform well as of the standard. So the hatchability will be differed and the chick quality also will be differed alot. Hence you will have impact on the chick performance in the farm level and we see the common problems like ECM, reddishness on the knees of the chicks, improper absorption of yolk, high feed consumption, time prolonging for gaining the body weight..etc. So to overcome all these problems at hatchery level and to perform the bird at its peak in the farm level we have developed a device.

The device is mainly works on the primary parameters like Temperature, Relative Humidity, and Positioning of the Egg, Required Air Circulation and secondary parameters like Co2 and O2 emissions and requirements which are the most important things to grow the chick embryo without any disturbances. So the device that we have invented is works on the based with IoT (Internet of Things). It monitors real time of all the above parameters and its senses if any function goes abnormal and immediately gives the alarm and sends the message to the hatchery management and we can monitor everything on our App which we can see on our mobile or system. We can centralize all the hatcheries which they have anywhere in the world. So you can monitor all the things by sitting at the one point.

Apart from these we have the devices to maintain the Breeding Farms, Commercial Layer Farms and Broiler Farms where your farm performance and production can be increased.