Vijay Bhaskar, one of the winners for Round 1 for Spark the Rise, has developed a product that improves the lives of farmers–providing them safety, and saving them time, money, and labor—by allowing them to water their fields remotely via their cell phones.

The Mercado serves a neighborhood that has been through hard times. The Chamizal, as the neighborhood is known, never recovered from the shift of the clothing factories to Mexico (and later China) with the advent of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994. Many of the women who worked in the industry lost their jobs and families are still struggling.

The technological breakthroughs of the Green Revolution in the 60s and 70s sprang us forward. But our growth has slowed. Agricultural growth has missed targets by 1 percentage point for the past 4 years, and the combination of economic growth with a swelling population means more people are demanding more agricultural commodities.

Shashank drives efficiency in agriculture by advising on everything from crop selection to marketing. He and his team live in villages to build relationships with farmers.

Too often farmers suffer greatly from unsuccessful crop yields, bad monsoons, and destructive pests. While Farms n Farmers cannot control the weather, they are helping farmers to increase their earning potential.

When Sam White and Sorin Grama of Promethean Power Systems...

Milaap, an online platform that enables global microlending to India’s poor, recently launched an innovative new program it hopes will paint a brighter future.