India: Farming in the heart of a ‘dying’ city

If you have a terrace or a balcony, you can have a digital farm that you could track on your mobile. Woolly Farms, started mid last year as a research project in University of Virginia, are in town and they build urban, community farms. They rent/lease out your space (with a minimum of 500 sq ft) and set up a high-tech hydroponic farm, and they share the produce with you and help you sell the excess through neighbourhood shops. In Bengaluru, they already operate four farms in homes in HSR Layout and have four others in Whitefield, Hebbal, Indiranagar and Marathahalli, and on Bannerghatta Road under construction.

“We are focused on building small communities, where each farm will look to produce a certain vegetable or herb,” says Nithun KV, CEO of this startup, who has done his B Tech in biotechnology from Kerala University. He says that they chose to start in Bengaluru because of the IISc report that predicted the city would be unlivable or dead in five years. “We want to make this city livable by providing fresh food,” he says. The startup is now incubated at Indian Institute of Management Bangalore.

Read more at The New Indian Express