CIO Bulletin

An end-to-end dairy technology solutions company: Stellapps

Stellapps is the first of its kind startup in India working towards the digitization of the dairy supply chain. Started in the year 2011, Stellapps is an IIT Madras incubated, Bangalore based, Internet of Things (IoT) startup with a primary focus on data acquisition and machine learning. Milk is the largest crop on this planet and there is a strong need for technology interventions, especially in the emerging markets where the yield per animal is low, traceability is inadequate and quality is not up to the mark. Digitization of the Agri-Dairy supply chain in the emerging markets is where Stellapps helps unlock unprecedented value on a very large scale.

Stellapps digitizes & optimizes Milk Production, Milk Procurement & Coldchain Management through SmartMoo™ platform (Full Stack IoT solution) which helps dairy farmers and cooperatives maximize profits while minimizing effort. Currently, the SmartMoo™ platform & suite of apps touch over two billion liters of milk annually. SmartMoo™ IoT Platform is the first step towards creating measurable value for all stakeholders including farmers. It provides measurable data for cattle insurance. The SmartMoo™ Cloud is capable of supporting data arising out of tens of millions of liters of milk through the milk production, procurement and cold chain flow across millions of farmers.

Stellapps’ SmartMoo™ IoT platform acquires data via sensors that are embedded in milking systems, animal wearables, milk chilling equipment, and milk procurement peripherals. The data acquired is transmitted to the Stellapps SmartMoo™ Big Data Cloud Service Delivery Platform (SDP) where the Stellapps SmartMoo™ suite of applications analyze and crunch the received data before forwarding the analytics & data science outcome to various stakeholders over low-end and smart mobile devices. The patent-pending hardware and software is designed to scale horizontally across other industry verticals.

A cold chain is a temperature-controlled supply chain. An unbroken cold chain is an uninterrupted series of storage and distribution activities which maintain a given temperature range. Cold chain must be carefully monitored and managed in order to maintain high quality milk & Dairy products. Any breach of the cold chain can have a severe impact on product quality, causing problems such as sourness, unpleasant taste and odor, texture and appearance problems, aggregation, color changes, pH value reduction and other health issues linked with bacterial growth. Desirable temperature for preserving optimal freshness and taste in milk and Dairy products is 4° C. Maintaining this temperature is critical during every stage of transport and storage from the Dairy farms to the supermarket shelves. Studies have shown, for example, that every 2 °C increase in the storage temperature of milk reduces its shelf life by 50% and adversely affects the quality.

Challenges

Right from the very moment milk leaves the udder of a cow it starts developing bacterial count. Thus it is required to be kept at an optimum temperature of 4° C to maintain its utmost quality. In entire Dairy supply chain starting from production till cold chain logistics level milk continuously loses its quality value due to various reasons. Although, absence of cold chain accounts for majority of milk quality drop. For chilling, BMCs are being used which comes in various sizes and are slowly moving in-roads to be deployed at even village level to let milk retain its quality. In developed countries, BMCs are deployed right at farm level to maintain milk quality but our Country still falls behind over this parameter. BMCs which comprise of in-built machines are utilized several times even when the milk has attained its optimum temperature. Alternatively, when milk has not even reached optimum temperature in BMC machines are switched off. In other instances, DG and Grid attached with BMC are not checked and DG keeps running when it is not required. Cleaning in Place; a major component for BMC maintenance is avoided by BMC personnel at times and even, if done, is via cold water. At many instances pilferage too happens through BMC. All such neglected operations affect the milk being poured and kept in BMC; severely affect the working of BMC. Setting up a BMC be at Collection/Chilling center or village level requires a sizeable investment, but to monitor operational parameters remotely via technological solutions is rare. Eventually this results in asset degradation and its associated components losing or wearing out soon before their actual shelf life. In the entire chain of Dairy Industry several stakeholders lose out due to this but primarily four major stakeholders suffer.

Stellapps’ Recommendations

With 2G and 3G already reaching in-roads of Rural India aligned with honorable Prime Minister’s Digital drive, remote monitoring and cloud solutions is not a distant dream. Sensors forming a major part of many electronics consumer industries to help monitor and reduce the rampant energy wastage and optimizing the working processes. In Dairy industry, altogether this technology is still in nascent stage and not being actively deployed. With remote monitoring cold chain solutions, the working capability of entire Dairy supply chain can be completely revolutionized to modernize and digitally uplift the Rural Dairy economy. With continuous upgradation of chilling centers and many more to be opened in coming time, the challenge of managing these high value assets with associated accessories & parts becomes humungous. There comes the solution of maintaining a futuristic monitoring & controlling cold chain solution which wipes all the operational problems and let entire Dairy supply chain start churning huge profits out of it. With several policies and World Bank projects coming in to modernize the Dairy sector of country, the cold chain solution becomes imperative.

Ranjith Mukundan, CEO