Big drug companies such as Himalaya, Dabur, and Patanjali are already using hydroponically cultivated herbs in their concoctions. Simultaneously, there has been a dramatic increase in new-age hydroponic farms and start-ups that are leveraging this technique and taking the agriculture industry to the next level in recent years. With a tech-based hydroponics setup, they are growing medicinal plants, aromatics, berries, leafy greens, microgreens, and various other plants.
Because of the opportunities that this technique can bring to the table, there is a great number of new start-ups and MSMEs that are coming up with business models around hydroponics. For instance, Ramveer Singh from Bareilly is an agriculture enthusiast and has turned his three-story home into a giant hydroponic setup.
“At present, the farm is spread across a 750 m2 space, hosting over 10,000 plants. I grow all seasonal vegetables with hydroponics. The system is designed using PVC pipes and circulates the water with the help of gravity,” he says.
Meanwhile, the rising popularity of hydroponics is not limited to just the farming community, as many related companies provide apps that help growers to produce more.
Gardening through apps
One such app is the Agro2o, which provides a personalized and cloud-connected plug-n-play indoor smart garden based on hydroponics.
“Everybody loves greenery, but it’s a hassle to take care of it, and nobody wants to come home to dead plants after a long day’s work or a weekend’s vacation. On the other hand, I was fascinated with hydroponics due to its many advantages. It’s a clean technology that has a lot of potential to resolve all the current practices which are not sustainable in the long run. I wanted to integrate this idea, so I started Agro2o in 2018 with a focus on technology as a tool to bring hydroponics into the mainstream and make it accessible to anyone, not just farmers,” says Yash Vyas, the founder.
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