Hatsun, milk federations in South trying out cloud solutions

The US-based technology firm ThoughtFocus has developed a cloud-based IT solution for management of dairy companies which is being used by Hatsun Agro and some milk federations in 50-odd centres in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
The company, which also offers cloud-based IT solutions to other sectors, has developed a solution for India's dairy sector to minimise manual intervention in dairy management, thereby benefiting both farmers and dairy owners.
Hatsun Agro, which has 5,000 collection centres and 100 chilling centres in South India, has installed the solutions in couple of its centres.
ThoughtFocus developed the solution two years ago with an aim to check quality of milk, ensure prompt payments to farmers, bring in intelligent systems at milk collecting centres, adopt pilferage control system and cold chain management solutions, ThoughtFocus Practice Head Avinash Dongre told PTI.

"We are working with private and cooperative dairies mainly in South India. The biggest adaptation is for a Tamil Nadu-based private dairy firm Hatsun Agro, where our solution is being deployed in 5,000 villages touching over 10 lakh milk producers," he said.
The company is also working with several milk federations in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Presently, the technology is being adopted in 50-odd centres in South India, he said.

The company aims to take these solutions to other parts of the country that contributes more than 90 per cent of total India's milk output, he added.
Hatsun Agro Additional General Manager (ITES) David Susinathan said the company is benefiting from these solutions as farmers are being paid in a prompt and transparent manner and the real-time data of milk from collection centres is helping them plan the production.

Talking about cost of the solutions, Dongre said, "It comes to as less as one paise per litre of milk and that too without any upfront IT investment."
"The only capital investment they need to do is on the Data Protection Unit (DPU) installed at the remote centres. Our dairy solution covers many functions. So we allow the dairy companies to add and remove functions as per their preferences," he said.
Asked how the technology improves performance of a dairy company, Dongre said: "We think technology will help to produce repeated results across distributed facilities. If somebody is looking to expand and still deliver quality, technology adaptation is a must. It allows same manpower deliver more."

On hurdles being faced in adoption of the dairy technology in India, Dongre said: "...Somewhere we are a society that assume software is free. That for us is a challenge. We are hence focusing on services around software."
The awareness of ICT (Information and communications technology) is important and for that the company is working with the dairy firms and government agencies, he added.