Hyderabad: T-Hub incubated and an UNICEF Innovation Fund Portfolio Company, StaTwig Technologies, which recently bagged the pilot order to track rice bags for the Telangana Civil Supplies Department, as a part of a blockchain technology initiative by the Information Technology, Electronics and Communications Department of the State, is all set to disrupt the supply chain space. The startup aims to provide transparency, trackability and traceability of goods.
The company is focusing on transforming extended supply chain management in the food and life sciences sectors, while developing new solutions for other industries. These sectors face challenges such as expiry and fake products, product wastage due to cold chain failures and increasing challenge over regulatory compliance. StaTwig aims to leverage blockchain and internet of things (IoT) to track product journeys across the supply chain from manufacturer to the customer.
As a part of the civil supplies order, in the first phase, the blockchain solution will be piloted in the Public Distribution System for tracking rice bags from Gajwel MLS Point of Siddipet District to the Fair Price Shops. And in the second phase, it is proposed to track gunny bags from Janagaon District Paddy Procurement Centre to the Fair Price Shops in Siddipet District, with the entire implementation scheduled to be completed in 6-8 months. After completion of the pilot, the blockchain solution will be further used to track the grade of rice carried in each bag by integration of an IoT-based grade testing solution.
Trendsetting pilot
Sid Chakravarthy, founder of StaTwig, told Telangana Today, “The Civil Supplies Department’s Public Distribution Service has 2.83 million beneficiaries and uses six crore bags annually. The department was proactively looking for a solution like ours. The use case came to us through them. True power of blockchain is only visible in large scale public distribution systems because the technology ensures transparency and builds trust in the government with the people. It is very important for the State to become the first user to enable startups to drive innovation using emerging technologies. What Telangana is piloting is a one-of-its-kind in the world. The US is planning to do so.”
In its proposal to the Civil Supplies department, StaTwig expressed that it could take the support from RICH (Research and Innovation Circle of Hyderabad) team by connecting to vendors and in implementing the solution.
When asked how efficient can be blockchain to track civil supplies or agri produce, he said, “Blockchain enables transparency of data at its core because the data is distributed, decentralised and immutable. The technology lays foundation for a log of other applications such as micro-payments to farmers and small individual businessmen, reducing power of middlemen, ensuring valuable data is not locked away in silos and providing deeper understanding of the product’s quality to the end consumer.”
Early 2019, UNICEF gave a grant to StaTwig to deliver visibility, monitoring and tracking of vaccines, essential medicines and health products in their extended supply chain.
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