Cropin secures Walmart project to boost sourcing in US, South America

Bengaluru-based Cropin, an artificial intelligence (AI) startup for food and agriculture, has secured a significant project with the world’s largest retailer, Walmart, to improve scalable sourcing solutions across its US and South American markets.

 

In a first-of-its-kind deployment, Cropin is rolling out advanced, custom-built AI-powered solutions to help transform Walmart’s sourcing strategies, enhance supply chain resilience, and optimise operational efficiency in the food retail sector.

 

“I cannot disclose specific details of our collaboration with Walmart due to confidentiality agreements, but I can share this: Cropin empowers retail and consumer packaged goods (CPG) clients to manage agri-food supply chain risks by leveraging AI, satellite data, and climate models,” Krishna Kumar, founder and chief executive officer of Cropin, told Business Standard. “Our platform predicts crop yield, weather impacts, and disruptions, providing early alerts on climate events, harvest timing, and regional supply shifts. This enables proactive procurement strategies, minimises spoilage, and strengthens sourcing resilience.”

 

This collaboration will enable Cropin’s advanced agri-intelligence platform to optimise Walmart’s fresh produce supply chain by improving yield forecasting, monitoring crop health, and enhancing the accuracy of seasonal transition predictions. The partnership aims to mitigate risks associated with weather, market volatility, and supply chain disruptions, ensuring a steady supply of high-quality perishable goods. This will improve product availability, reduce waste, and provide customers with better quality produce.

 

In an increasingly climate-impacted world, agri-food stakeholders are grappling with extreme weather events, supply chain disruptions, and the ripple effects of macroeconomic and geopolitical challenges.

 

“Tech innovation is what drives real-world solutions to move forward a globally resilient supply chain,” said Kyle Carlyle, vice-president of sourcing innovation and surety of supply, Walmart. “By collaborating with Cropin, it enables Walmart to further streamline sourcing practices and better predict yields using their real-time Gen-AI technology. We are always looking for new ways to innovate and Cropin demonstrates our bold innovation goals in the agriculture space.”

 

By leveraging crop readiness insights, quality forecasts, and risk assessments, Cropin enables a shift from guesswork to precision, helping businesses balance cost, quality, and sustainability in a dynamic market. Its automated tools provide granular, localised insights into crop health, pest outbreaks, and extreme weather risks, making supply chains more climate resilient. Additionally, Cropin can help predict the future of crop yields and supply stability, allowing businesses to manage pricing strategies without compromising quality. Its sustainability impact dashboard further strengthens compliance by tracking greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, water usage, and deforestation impact, offering digital validation for regulations such as the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR).

 

“In real-world deployments worldwide, our platform has consistently delivered significant cost savings, enhanced efficiency, increased profitability, and sustainability benefits,” said Kumar. “In Walmart’s complex supply chain, Cropin’s technology is expected to drive measurable impact on product availability and waste reduction by providing predictive, real-time intelligence across the agri-value chain.”

 

Founded in 2010, Cropin has partnered with over 100 business-to-business (B2B) customers, digitising 30 million acres of farmland and positively impacting more than 7 million farmers worldwide. Its crop knowledge graph, covering 500 crops and 10,000 varieties across 103 countries, powers the Cropin Cloud. With intelligence built around over 1 billion acres of the world’s cultivable land, Cropin said it continues to lead the transformation of global food systems. Its customers include PepsiCo, Walmart, the World Bank, and BASF.

 

“A prime example is our work with PepsiCo, where our AI-driven Disease Early Warning Model reduced crop threats from pests and diseases by 80 per cent, a critical breakthrough considering crop pandemics are a leading cause of agricultural losses worldwide,” said Kumar.

 

He said additionally, the Cropin platform boosted potato yields by up to 25 per cent, significantly enhancing produce availability. He said smallholder farmers, in particular, saw a potential income increase of $55 per acre, reinforcing the direct impact of AI-powered solutions on profitability, sustainability, and livelihoods.

 

“We continue to expand our global footprint. Strategically, Europe and North America are key markets for our next phase of growth,” said Kumar.