Rodrogas had a tough couple of weeks because he didn’t know how to say “no” to a $300,000 offer. “That’s a lot of money,” he told Business Insider, recounting how he created an AI tool to help farmers analyze crop health and why he didn’t want the tool to become unavailable to the farmers he designed it for.
Last year, a venture capitalist offered him a staggering sum of money to drop out of high school and run his AI startup full-time. Rudrogas Kunvar, who is of Indian origin, is 16 years old and mustered up the courage to say “no” to this lucrative offer because he did not want his product to be caught chasing benefits. His Evion platform is free and he has now partnered with 18-year-old Jacob Lee to scale his tool.
His tool can help farmers analyze crop health by uploading their camera images, even an inexpensive drone camera.
The farmers said they were mostly guessing: Kunvar talking about how he got the idea
Konvar said he attended a community festival in Montgomery County during his sophomore year at Poolesville High School. One of the farmers asked how they understood that the plant was infected. “Basically, he said he was guessing. I talked to a few other farmers, and I realized there was a common thread between all their responses,” he said, explaining his shock when he realized that AI advances weren’t doing much for agriculture.
Convar wanted to build his own fleet of fully autonomous drones, but then shifted his focus to studying drones and cost reasons. It was the camera that made drones so expensive so he thought if there was a way to get similar data using a simple camera. Evion uses artificial intelligence to examine images taken from drones, looking at the color and reflectivity of the plants captured. The AI then returns a colour-coded crop health map. Green means healthy, orange is moderate, and red indicates crop stress.
They said the tool has already reached more than 2,000 farmers across Asia and the United States.
