How IFFCO is using cloud, drones to drive greater efficiency and productivity

Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Ltd. (IFFCO), one of India’s leading fertiliser manufacturers in the cooperative sector, has adopted Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP to streamline finance operations and boost efficiency.

The organisation serves over 35,000 cooperatives and 55 million farmers and has five manufacturing plants and 19 joint ventures worldwide. Speaking to TechCircle, A.K Gupta, Director - IT Services & Member Board, IFFCO, highlighted the company's commitment to introducing innovative ideas that benefit Indian farmers.

In line with this objective, IFFCO launched a ground-breaking product in 2022 - nano urea. The portable 500 ml bottle offers benefits like higher yields, reduced pesticide usage, and decreased soil erosion.

Gupta said, “This innovation has increased IFFCO's need for cloud computing, prompting the search for a reliable cloud vendor. The cloud infrastructure allows IFFCO to adapt to market changes, accelerate innovation, and improve application performance while reducing operational burdens from legacy systems.”

To support its business activities, IFFCO uses various Oracle products like Oracle E-Business Suite and eVikas CRM, along with custom applications for procurement, supply chain management, and HR management.

These applications are deployed in two Oracle Cloud Infrastructure regions in India: Mumbai and Hyderabad. The Mumbai region acts as a central hub, with Hyderabad serving as a disaster recovery site for uninterrupted application functioning in case of any issues.

The migration of IFFCO's workloads to OCI was completed successfully within a short timeframe, ensuring minimal disruption. Gupta said it took 57 hours for EBS and 33 hours for custom applications. This migration process was completed six hours ahead of the estimated time.

Gupta highlighted the benefits of leveraging OCI for IFFCO, including improved business agility, faster performance, and enhanced security. “Performance has increased significantly, allowing teams to achieve more in less time, such as generating reports faster,” he said.

In July 2023, IFFCO invested in 2,500 drones for spraying nano urea and other chemicals, operated by rural entrepreneurs. Each drone can cover 20 acres per day, with electric three-wheelers acquired for transportation. Orders for tractor-mounted boom sprayers and hose reel sprayers were also placed for foliar application of nano fertilisers.

Gupta said, the company is making 400 crore rupee investment in drones and three-wheelers, with potential future investments exceeding 1000 crore rupees over three years. IFFCO also aims to enhance agricultural operations with advanced technology and efficient cloud management through OCI.

Moving forward, Gupta sheds light on the company's commitment to prioritising artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies for maintenance and drone operations. Plans include transitioning applications to a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model like Oracle EBS. The company currently has Oracle OCI licenses but has yet to implement it as a SaaS, said Gupta.

“Our main focus is on developing voice-enabled services to empower customers, including farmers, with AI-based interactions and recognition technology for analysing crop issues,” he summed up.