Segritech is using AI to grade fruits and improve farmers' earnings

What happened

While advanced optical sorting machines are available globally, their high costs and large size make them impractical for regional mandis, local collection centres, and smallholder farms. Hyderabad-based agritech startup Segritech builds compact, AI-powered fruit grading machines and is developing autonomous harvesting robots to help farmers get better prices for their produce.

Agricultural produce in India often loses value before it reaches retail shelves. Much of the sorting is still done manually, leading to inconsistent grading, damaged produce, and losses across the supply chain.

Hyderabad-based Segritech is looking to address this gap with compact, AI-powered optical grading machines that can sort fruit at the farm gate or collection point. Founded in 2022 by Hetendra Singh, Sri Kusulu Devalla, and Vijay Pratap Singh, the startup emerged after the founders had to pivot their earlier supply-chain venture, Tikkly.com, during the COVID-19 pandemic.