By Kumarjit Mazumder, VP of Sales at SatSure.
The Basmati Export Development Foundation, as well as AIREA, representing India’s rice exporters, and APEDA – the government’s export promotion authority, are backing a first-of-its-kind satellite-based intelligence platform, being developed by SatSure, for the world’s largest premium rice export economy.
India exported 5.24 million metric tonnes of Basmati in 2023-24. That’s worth $5.84 billion, and it’s up 21.9 percent year on year, as per the DGCIS’ Annual Export data.
Basmati is grown across seven states and union territories in India, across more than 30 districts in Uttar Pradesh alone. There are forty-five officially notified varieties of this premium rice, from heritage cultivars like Basmati 370 to hybrids like Pusa Basmati 1121.
India already leads the world in premium rice exports, and it’s one of the country’s most valuable agricultural brands. The opportunity is to lead the world in agricultural intelligence and transparency.
Right now, that intelligence still comes from field surveys, local reporting, manual assessments at warehouses, and season estimates calculated using historical regional numbers – methods which feel inadequate for the current scale of this industry and crop grown across millions of hectares and hundreds of districts. These manual methods offer less and less predictable data because of the volatility introduced by climate change over the last decade. Varietal distribution across regions is largely a guess for current seasons. Production estimates often land after procurement decisions have already been made.
Buyers on the other end of this trade and importers across the Gulf, Iran, the US are no longer asking only about quality and volume. They want:
- Traceability across supply chains
- Transparency into sourcing regions
- Visibility into supply risks
- Sustainability data, and
- Proof that supply will hold up
Building an AI-Powered Basmati Intelligence Platform with AIREA
To address this, SatSure is collaborating with the All India Rice Exporters Association (AIREA), the Government’s export promotion authority (APEDA), and the Basmati Export Development Foundation (BEDF), to build one of the world’s most ambitious artificial intelligence and computer vision missions for specialty agriculture.
The Complexity of the Technical Ambition
Mapping any crop variety is complex. In India, ground truth has been the backbone of data collection for crop data updates. While ground truth can give a certain assurance of accuracy, provided the data capturing systems are reliable, they are never scalable. The data collection schedules can be delayed, in many cases, may not even be collected, and relying just on farmer interviews gives rise to a lot of false positives which exponentially reduces the accuracy levels at scale.
The Uniqueness of SatSure’s Digital Twin
We’re building a national-scale digital twin of India’s Basmati crop – a satellite-based AI driven varietal intelligence platform that tracks where Basmati is grown,what variety is grown,how it’s performing, and how much is produced, updated through the season. The platform will continuously improve over the years, every season, built at the intersection of satellite imagery, AI, ground truth and market observations. Every season contributes new satellite observations, field validation, and market signals that improves model performance. The result is an AI engine that becomes more accurate, resilient, and valuable with every crop cycle rather than restarting from scratch.
This puts our ambition beyond building just a crop monitoring tool. What we’re building combines
- Earth Observation and satellite imagery
- Computer Vision models trained on crop signatures.
- Machine Learning algorithms and AI for classification and forecasting
- Large scale ground truth observations
- Weather and climate intelligence
- Market and supply chain signals
These come together into a single, continuously evolving picture of the crop. We call it a digital twin for basmati. As far as we know, it’s the first attempt at one for Basmati anywhere in the world, at this scale.
First Phase
This season, that means:
- Covering 100+ districts across every major Basmati-growing region
- 50,000+ ground truth observations across multiple crop stages
- Thousands of Aadhatis, aggregators, and market participants in the data loop
- AI models trained jointly on satellite imagery, field intelligence, weather, and market signals across multiple crop stages
A Platform Built to Impact the Entire Value Chain
The success of the project will give India its most trusted Basmati intelligence platform. This backbone will help the entire value chain with improved traceability, transparency and sustainability initiatives backed by consistent, data-driven monitoring from satellites.
| For Exporters | For Policymakers |
| 1. Improved procurement & export planning 2. Better understanding of regional production 3. Early signals on potential supply disruptions | 1. Stronger evidence for policy formulations 2. Faster response to regional stress events 3. Better planning and resource allocation |
| For Trade Associations | For Financial Institutions |
| 1. Continuous crop monitoring 2. Accurate cropping insights 3. Better production forecasts | 1. Improved risk assessment 2. Better understanding of climate impacts 3. Stronger market confidence and inclusion. |
SatSure is proud to have the support from AIREA, representing India’s rice exporters, APEDA – the Government’s export promotion authority, along with the Basmati Export Development Foundation as the named partners on this pioneering effort. We’re confident of bridging a future where agricultural decisions are powered by science, transparency, and artificial intelligence.
This is phase one of a multi-season build. We’ll report back as the season’s data comes in.
About the Author
Kumarjit Mazumder is the Vice President of Sales at SatSure, leading the company’s agricultural business across agri-inputs, agri-commodities, agricultural lending, and insurance. If you’re exploring how satellite imagery, AI, and geospatial intelligence can improve traceability, strengthen risk assessment, optimize operations, or unlock new revenue opportunities across the agricultural value chain, we’d be happy to connect.
Schedule a conversation with our team to learn how SatSure can help your business make better decisions with Earth Observation intelligence.