At One to Watch, one of the very first companies I was assigned to assist in debt facilitation and business development was G.J. Poultry. I was just out of college, with a head full of ideas and passion, and it was perfect timing that I met Shishir, an equally energetic young person roughly my age who shared the same zeal about IT and automation as I did.
Over countless meetings and interactions, Shishir was kind enough to explain all the intricacies of his poultry business and value chain, which, honestly, I had no idea was so complex. Who knew that the chicken breast I had for lunch had gone through such a journey? What was striking was how manual-intensive and laborious the whole process was, and the high mortality rate for birds.
Through the NIIC 2 Fund, I’ve had the privilege of supporting Shishir and his team as they shape and plan SmartFlock: an IoT-powered poultry management platform designed to digitize and streamline operations for smallholder poultry farmers. It’s Shishir’s brainchild, and I’ve been lucky to contribute to parts of the journey so far.
SmartFlock , once launched, will allow farmers to track everything from feed schedules and weight gain to temperature, vaccination logs, and chick health. If birds fall sick, the system can instantly connect farmers to veterinary services. Distributors will have visibility into real-time supply, and farmers will be empowered to make smarter, data-backed decisions.
This also has huge implications for finance. Right now, banks and financial institutions are hesitant to lend to poultry farmers because there’s little data to rely on: no records, no traceability, no guarantees. But with a platform like SmartFlock, poultry farms become visible, predictable, and credit-worthy. It de-risks lending and opens the door to financing for an entire underserved sector.
Honestly, it’s like the Beatles song: All it takes is data.
As part of the planning process, we’ve already rolled out a small but promising IoT deployment to track real-time on-farm metrics, a critical first step in testing how this can work at scale. I had never ever been to a poultry farm before, now I’ve probably been to too many. The smell was horrible at first, but spending hours brainstorming with the engineering team inside that coop has somehow gotten me used to it.
Dare I say… I even miss it at times.
We’re just getting started, but if this takes off, SmartFlock could completely transform how poultry is grown, managed, and financed in Nepal.
And to think, it all started with a chicken.
