Overview

A large chemical company used OneReach.ai to help farmers save an enormous harvest from disaster. 

Problem Description

• • Egyptian tomato farmers live in fear of a disease that can wipe out their entire crop in an instant. The onset of this disease is sudden and it hits hard. When the first tomato plant starts to show symptoms, the farmers only have 12 hours to inoculate their crop before losing everything. Panicked, the farmers act fast and sometimes over-inoculate their crop. Unfortunately, too much of the inoculation chemical will also hurt the farmers’ crop. If Heinz detects too much of the chemical, they won’t use the Egyptian tomatoes in their ketchup.

Solution Identification

• • Though the farmers are rarely at their computer, they always have a phone in their pocket. OneReach.ai built a WhatsApp bot to quickly warn the farmers at the first sighting of the tomato threatening disease. What’s more, the WhatsApp bot was able to advise the farmers on when and how to use the chemical that would save their crop, without overdoing it. 

Vendor Selection Criteria

• • The chemical company discovered OneReach.ai through Vonage at a Tech Crunch conference in 2018. The chemical company had previously used a chatbot solution that wasn’t sophisticated enough to grow with their company. OneReach.ai’s dynamic platform offered.

Vendor Selection Process

Selection Criteria Development Steps

• • The chemical company wanted to create a way to connect with the farmers; reaching them where they operate.  The farmers aren’t sitting in front of computers, but they can be reached over Whatsapp.
  • They created 3 solutions on the OneReach.ai platform: Conversational NLU Bot, RSS feed sending bot and Bulk sending tool in Egypt.
    

Conversational NLU Bot

• • Allows for conversation between farmer and the chemical company over WhatsApp.
  • They can ask questions about crops, products, weather, etc.
  • Provides support for farmers, students, and researchers – anyone who is using their products.
  • Spans 12 different countries, 10 languages.
  • Most countries are communicating using WhatsApp but the solution. works for Viber and Facebook Messenger as well.

RSS Feed Sending Bot

• • Allows for conversation (same as the conversational NLU bot) but also collects information about the user so they can subscribe to updates and alerts.

Bulk Sending Tool In Egypt

• • To monitor the tomato crops in Egypt, they have a bulk sending tool that notifies everyone in the region if they see pests or diseases striking.

Rollout

• • It took OneReach.ai 2 months to build the Conversational NLU Bot, and after testing and improvements, it was released 4 months later for another 10 countries.