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.

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 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.

“Interactions with farmers, exporters, and mandi traders made us realise that automation in fruit and vegetable handling was a critical pain point,” says Hetendra Singh.

Segritech has developed a modular range of AI-powered grading and packing machines available in two models: Mini Sort, priced at Rs 10 lakh plus GST, and Fast Sort, priced at Rs 20 lakh plus GST.

The compact machines use complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) and RGB cameras, along with near-infrared and ultraviolet imaging, to capture high-speed images of produce.

Custom computer vision and deep learning models analyse the surface of each fruit to identify skin characteristics, fungal marks, sunspots, and physical scars.

The machines can grade several crops, including pomegranates, apples, oranges, mangoes, kiwis, avocados, tomatoes, and potatoes.

“The machine processes 10 to 12 fruits per second, giving us a throughput of about two to three tonnes an hour at a 95% accuracy rate,” Hetendra Singh says.

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