The Better India · 8 days ago

How Agrograde Uses AI to Sort 24,000 Quintals Daily and Bring Efficiency to Thousands of Farmers

Kshitij Thakur watched his parents pour their lives into a farm that the system failed, and when they finally stopped farming, he carried that failure with him into engineering school. Years later, he and partner Rakesh Barai built what European machines couldn't: an AI-powered grader gentle enough for Indian onions, precise enough to restore trust between farmers and buyers. "We listened more than we spoke," Rakesh says of the six prototypes it took, each one shaped by farmers who had been burned before by technology that damaged their crops. Now across twelve states, the machines are doing something quietly revolutionary-not just sorting onions faster or cheaper, but giving farmers like Bhanudas Shelke something they'd lost: "credibility," he says, the kind that opens export markets and silences middlemen. What began as one engineer's promise to a farm he couldn't save has become 70 machines grading 24,000 quintals daily, proof that technology born from personal loss can create collective dignity.