Agri-tech start-up going places with care of cows  

Kochi-based Brainwired is getting orders to install approximately five lakh tags for farm animals over the next two years

Kochi-based agri-tech start-up Brainwired is going places taking care of livestock even as tools from the same stable for care of pets and animals such as horses, camels, and goats are in an advanced stage of research and development.

The start-up’s flagship product is in the market for dairy animals (mainly cows). The livestock health monitoring and tracking system, WeSTOCK, provides timely care using an Internet of Things-based ear tag and a unique machine learning algorithm to track livestock, identify the sick and pregnant among them, alert farmers, and help them with timely attention from vets.

The IoT-based device has now been used in more than 600 cows, both in Kerala and outside. The governments of Maharashtra and Kashmir are in talks with Brainwired for deployment of WeSTOCK. “We are in talks with some of India’s large milk cooperatives and dairy aggregators for the device application,” said Srishankar S. Nair, who co-founded the venture with his engineering partner Romeo P. Jerard, both of whom passed out of a private engineering college near Kochi.

Led by the two, WeSTOCK has a 10-member core team. The company was registered two-and-a-half years ago. It benefited from both angel funding and a government grant that has helped it expand its research operations.

Mr. Nair said Brainwired device, as it indicated, is installed in the ears of cows, while it will be belts for camels and horses, and collars for goats and pets. The WeSTOCK device has multiple versions named COWBOY for cows, DUNES for camels, RANCHER for horses, and VETTO for pets.

Animal health monitoring is one of the central issues addressed using the device, but it will also help provide crucial inputs like milk yield and feed inputs for more efficient farm management with dedicated veterinary support.