Weather forecasting in India can be traced back to the earnest efforts of Vedic and post Vedic scholars to predict monsoon based on their conclusions of sky conditions and weather parameters. More recently, the British established India Meteorological Department (IMD) in 1875 and instituted modern weather observation and forecasting techniques.
India's weather scene had been dominated by the nonchalance of the government run IMD until early 2000s when private entrepreneurship changed the status quo for a more robust weather forecasting and dissemination ecosystem. Private weather companies like Skymet Weather, Express Weather and Weather Risk introduced new-fangled weather based products and services addressing an entire gamut of weather pains confronted by Indian industry and agriculture.
The last decade has seen frenzied activity in the sector with many novel farmer information services and weather based energy demand estimation services getting established by private weather forecasters. From one daily weather bulletin on TV as the only source of weather information to an entire array of weather inputs on hand-held devices, disruptive innovation driven in by the private forecasters has changed how weather data will be perceived and consumed by the end user forever.
Skymet Weather owns the first India specific weather website and android app that provides weather forecast and news content. Express Weather takes an actionable advisory oriented approach and provides disease alerts, expert opinion & irrigation schedule at plot level, geo-tagged by the farmer using a smartphone. All features of its flagship android based app Farmneed are also accessible through desktop applications.
Private weather agencies are also revolutionising the crop insurance space in India. Weather Risk was an early mover and created insurance products tailor made to safeguard weather inflicted losses to specific crops. Skymet Weather is combining remote sensing and drone acquired imagery to map crop health. Together, the sector is likely to make crop insurance more effective, affordable and inclusive in the near future.
Climate change induced inclement weather events are however mutating the misfortunes related to weather. Climate smart weather forecast and risk mitigation needs significant research Rupee investments in a short span of time. It is a big ask for an industry that is pegged at around Rs 200 crores annually. It is imperative that the IMD supports private initiatives in this sphere like its US counterpart does.
Such a concerted endeavour will actuate further accurate drought and flood forecasts, put the power of weather information at the behest of more Indians and help manage weather perils effectually. It will save thousands of crore in economic costs at both micro and macro levels and make India truly weather adept.
Columnist
Indranil is a weather industry expert with a decade long experience in the domain. He has been instrumental in setting up novel weather services across landscapes for both agriculture and industry, raising capital and crafting a growth story for weather forecasting in India. Currently he is Senior Vice President of Express Weather.
