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When Ashish Sonkusare launched his cleantech startup eVerse AI in 2022, after a year of developing the technology, he wanted to target the US market. But upon careful analysis of the Indian dairy industry, he realised that there was greater need and business potential in his home country. “There’s hardly any technology company in the Indian dairy space. India has many unique problems which have remained unsolved for decades. Whatever technology exists, it caters to a more organised farm that comprises only 5% of the market. So, we wanted to provide our solutions to smallholder dairy farmers in villages,” CEO Sonkusare tells YourStory. Apart from Sonkusare, the founding team comprises Director Vidhi Gaur and Vice President Shailendra Narwade. Its 23-member team works out of Nagpur and has filed five patent applications. In the three years of operation, the startup has amassed 18 B2B and 10 lakh B2C clients, while remaining bootstrapped. A cleantech innovation in the dairy industry eVerse structures its offerings around two interconnected solution stacks: Connected Cow and Green Cow. The Connected Cow solution stack aims to increase farmers' income and make their business more profitable. It provides solutions to critical challenges, such as improving cow fertility by helping farmers breed cows more frequently for higher milk production. “It also provides 24/7 monitoring to detect sickness, sending immediate alerts and notifications for prompt treatment on its app to farmers. Furthermore, Connected Cow includes solutions designed to improve the cow's milk yield. The key product is our IoT-based smart cow collar device built on an AI/ML platform that costs Rs 5,000 each,” he explains. Additionally, the Connected Cow platform and app are provided free of cost, featuring Cow GPT that uses the Claude LLM foundation model (Cloud Sonnet) to offer accurate insights on animal health and nutrition. While Connected Cow addresses the productivity aspects of dairy farming, the Green Cow solution stack addresses the climate aspects. It works on reducing the production of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, as livestock accounts for an estimated 40% of its emissions. The startup also monitors methane emissions from the cattle using portable handheld devices. With its Maharashtra Methane Mission, which commenced in December 2024, the startup aims to reduce methane emissions, convert those reductions into carbon credits, and ensure that the revenue generated from the credits flows directly back to the farmers, providing them with additional income without any cost attached. Farmers participating in the carbon project can earn an extra Rs 3,000 per cow annually from the carbon credits alone. The market and its competition eVerse competes in India with a company called Stellapps, which has a similar device (actually a pedometer) that is put on the leg of the cow. Then there are foreign competitors, including AllFlex, DeLaval, and Datamars, but their devices aren’t suitable for the Indian breeds of cows. In the clean tech space, the competition is mostly with other companies working on biochar, ARR agroforestry, and similar areas. It competes with the Bengaluru-based altM, which operates in the agri carbon space, but Sonkusare believes no Indian clean tech startups are working in the livestock methane space. The startup plans to expand its business to international markets such as Bangladesh, Africa, New Zealand, and the US over the next four months. eVerse is part of YourStory’s Tech30 cohort—a selection of India’s most promising startups of 2025—unveiled at TechSparks Bengaluru. (Edited by Kanishk Singh)
