Business Story

Data is revolutionizing agriculture by enabling better decisions

Published

1 month ago

May 6, 2025

Syngenta_Data_is_revolutionizing_agriculture_by_enabling_better_decisions

Enhanced connectivity in agriculture is predicted to add more than $500 billion to global gross domestic product by the end of the decade, according to the consultancy McKinsey. Sophisticated digital tools – such as sensors, drones and data analytics – are enabling new levels of precision agriculture, optimized resource use and improved decision-making, empowering farmers and transforming the sustainability of agriculture. Farm operations at the leading edge of this technology transformation are positioning themselves to thrive in this connectivity-driven future.

.@Syngenta and @AlDahraHolding are partnering to deploy Cropwise®️ Operations across 220,000+ acres in Romania, Serbia, Egypt & Morocco.

Syngenta, a global leader in agricultural innovation, and Al Dahra, a multinational agribusiness stewarding 400,000 acres of sustainable irrigated farmland with active operations across six continents, have announced a strategic partnership to implement Syngenta’s digital farm management solutions across more than 220,000 acres of Al Dahra farms in Romania, Serbia, Egypt and Morocco. This collaboration aims to advance sustainable agriculture at scale and enhance productivity across key regions.

By implementing Syngenta’s Cropwise^® Operations, Al Dahra will be able to centralize farm data across its operations in multiple countries and production sites and optimize its farm management decisions – from the individual field level to across its entire operations. Through the collaboration, Al Dahra aims to improve the sustainability of its agricultural operations, ensure long-term productivity and secure its feed supply.

Syngenta’s Cropwise^® Operations is an all-in-one platform integrating modules for agronomic, financial, and administrative farm management, which will be integrated with Al Dahra’s existing digital tools. Real-time data will enable Al Dahra’s farm managers to quickly respond to emerging pest or disease situations, better manage water usage and irrigation efficiency, and to optimize and target their seed, fertilizer and agricultural input use.

Cropwise^® Operations has been fully integrated into Al-Dahra’s complex IT solutions landscape, enabling the implementation of unified corporate standards across the entire agro-holiding. As a result, all business units now use the same templates, classifiers and metrics, allowing for consistent and compatible managerial reporting.

Feroz Sheikh, Chief Information and Digital Officer at Syngenta Group, said: “Our Cropwise^® Operations platform represents a significant leap forward in digital agriculture. By partnering with Al Dahra, we’re demonstrating how data-driven insights can transform large-scale farming operations across diverse geographies. This partnership not only revolutionizes farm management and optimizes yields but also sets a new global standard for sustainable, data-driven farming.” Cropwise^® digitally connects 70 million hectares of farmland at present.

Arnoud van den Berg, Group CEO at Al Dahra, said: “At Al Dahra, we’re always looking for ways to push the industry forward through innovation. Our vision for the future is clear: a smart, digital infrastructure that works for us, cutting down on manual data entry and giving our employees more time to focus on what really matters. One of our biggest goals is to automate reporting as much as possible, ensuring real-time insights into everything happening on our farms. To make that vision a reality we needed the right partner, and Cropwise^® Operations stood out as the perfect fit for taking our farm management to the next level.”

Syngenta’s Cropwise^® Operations is being utilized for:

Field Monitoring and Analysis

Real-time satellite monitoring of plant health and crop conditions.
Multiple vegetation indices analysis (NDVI, NDMI, NDWI).
Early problem detection through advanced scouting functionalities.
Private weather station networks providing hyperlocal forecasting.
Comprehensive soil data collection and analysis.

Farm Operations Management

Comprehensive data integration from satellites, machinery, weather, irrigation stations, and sensors.
Complex data analysis to interpret patterns and predict crop yields.
Decision support tools for optimizing pesticide and fertilizer applications.
Seasonal planning and detailed record-keeping of all agricultural operations.
Trial management system for monitoring and analyzing field experiments.

Resource Optimization

Tracking of fuel consumption and maintenance schedules.
Variable Rate Application support.
Streamlined and digitalized documentation processes.
Inventory management and production costs tracking.
Fleet management including maintenance activities, machinery repairs, and routine check-ups.

Advanced Equipment Integration

Seamless integration with John Deere Operations Center.
Compatible with Trimble, Claas, and Safe Fleet systems.
Automated data transfer from field equipment to central management platform.
Real-time equipment status monitoring and performance optimization.

Sustainability Initiatives

Implementation of Best Management Practices.
Monitoring of soil health indicators.
Water management through precision irrigation techniques.

About Syngenta

Syngenta is a global leader in agricultural innovation with a presence in more than 90 countries. Syngenta is focused on developing technologies and farming practices that empower farmers, so they can make the transformation required to feed the world’s population while preserving our planet. Its bold scientific discoveries deliver better benefits for farmers and society on a bigger scale than ever before. Guided by its Sustainability Priorities, Syngenta is developing new technologies and solutions that support farmers to grow healthier plants in healthier soil with a higher yield. Syngenta Crop Protection is headquartered in Basel, Switzerland; Syngenta Seeds is headquartered in the United States.

About Al Dahra

Al Dahra is a prominent multinational leader in agribusiness, with over 400 thousand acres of agricultural land in Egypt, Romania, Serbia, USA, and other countries, specialized in cultivation, production and trading of nearly 3 million tons of essential food commodities and up to 3 million tons of animal feed. Serving a large customer base from Commercial enterprises to Government agencies, Al Dahra has a widespread geographic footprint, operating in over 20 countries and catering to more than 40 markets with a leading position in Africa, Europe and the Middle East. For more information, visit www.aldahra.com.

Syngenta’s Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This document may contain forward-looking statements, which can be identified by terminology such as ‘expect’, ‘would’, ‘will’, ‘potential’, ‘plans’, ‘prospects’, ‘estimated’, ‘aiming’, ‘on track’ and similar expressions. Such statements may be subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results to differ materially from these statements. For Syngenta, such risks and uncertainties include risks relating to legal proceedings, regulatory approvals, new product development, increasing competition, customer credit risk, general economic and market conditions, compliance and remediation, intellectual property rights, implementation of organizational changes, impairment of intangible assets, consumer perceptions of genetically modified crops and organisms or crop protection chemicals, climatic variations, fluctuations in exchange rates and/or commodity prices, single source supply arrangements, political uncertainty, natural disasters, and breaches of data security or other disruptions of information technology. Syngenta assumes no obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect actual results, changed assumptions or other factors.

Business Story

Turkey’s Economic Descent: A Nation at the Crossroads of Heritage and Geopolitics

Published

3 weeks ago

May 14, 2025

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From Ottoman Grandeur to Economic Challenges

Turkey, a nation where East meets West, has long been celebrated for its rich history, vibrant culture, and strategic geopolitical position. However, recent years have seen the country grappling with significant economic challenges, marked by soaring inflation, a depreciating currency, and strained international relations.

Economic Policies and the Lira’s Decline

Under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan‘s leadership, Turkey has adopted unconventional economic strategies, notably the belief that high interest rates fuel inflation. This approach led to significant rate cuts even as inflation soared, causing the Turkish lira to depreciate sharply. In March 2025, the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, a prominent opposition figure, further destabilized the economy, leading to a 12.7% drop in the lira’s value and a substantial outflow of foreign investments.

Geopolitical Alignments and Domestic Repercussions

Turkey’s foreign policy choices have also stirred controversy. Its overt support for Pakistan during the recent Operation Sindoor, including supplying drones and military equipment, has strained relations with India. This alignment has led to economic repercussions, with Indian industries boycotting Turkish products and a significant decline in tourism from India.

India’s Strategic Response: Economic and Diplomatic Measures

In response to Turkey’s support for Pakistan, India has undertaken several measures:

Tourism Boycott: Indian travelers have significantly reduced visits to Turkey, with major travel agencies reporting a 60% drop in bookings and a 250% increase in cancellations.
Trade Restrictions: Indian traders have halted imports of Turkish goods, notably marble and fruits, impacting trade worth approximately Rs 3,000 crore.
Cultural and Media Actions: The Indian film industry has been urged to avoid Turkey as a shooting destination, and Turkish state media accounts have faced restrictions in India.
Diplomatic Realignments: India is strengthening ties with Turkey’s regional rivals, such as Greece, Armenia, and Cyprus, to counterbalance Turkey’s influence.

IndiGo and Turkish Airlines: Under Scrutiny

IndiGo, India’s largest airline, has faced mounting pressure to reconsider its codeshare agreement with Turkish Airlines. This partnership, established in 2018, allows seamless connectivity to over 30 destinations across Europe and the United States via Istanbul. However, public sentiment has turned against this collaboration, with calls for its termination gaining momentum. IndiGo has not yet made a formal announcement regarding the future of this partnership.

Navigating the Path Forward

Turkey’s current predicament is a confluence of internal economic policies and external geopolitical decisions. Balancing its rich heritage with the demands of modern governance requires introspection and strategic recalibration. Restoring economic stability and fostering international trust are paramount. As Turkey reflects on its legacy, the path it chooses will determine whether it can harmonize its illustrious past with a prosperous future.

#TurkeyEconomy #TurkishLira #Geopolitics #IndiaTurkeyRelations #EconomicPolicy #Erdoğan #OperationSindoor #GlobalEconomy

Business Story

Ankush Dadu: Sweetening India’s Legacy with a Billion-Dollar Vision

Published

4 weeks ago

May 11, 2025

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At the intersection of tradition and modern luxury, Ankush Dadu, Partner, Anand Sweets & Savouries, Anand Sweets & Savouries is turning mithai into a premium global experience—and Anand Sweets into a billion-rupee culinary empire.

By The Cover Story | Fastest Growing Leaders in the World, 2025 Edition

In a world obsessed with disruptive tech and digital scale, Ankush Dadu chose a different path: he built a revolution using ghee, saffron, and silver leaf.

As Partner at Anand Sweets & Savouries, the Bengaluru-born brand with decades of heritage, Dadu isn’t just leading a food company—he’s crafting a global narrative of Indian luxury through sweets. In 2025, The Cover Story names him among the Fastest Growing Leaders in the World, not just for scaling a legacy, but for reimagining what “premium” means in the most crowded consumer market on Earth.

From Halwai to Haute

Walk into any Anand Sweets flagship store in 2025, and you’ll see what Dadu has created: not a mithai shop—but a multi-sensory luxury experience.

Marble counters, curated gift hampers, branded packaging, and the aroma of saffron-laced khoya meet you like you’ve entered an Indian Hermès of mithai. Under Dadu’s leadership, Anand Sweets has transitioned from a traditional sweets manufacturer into a modern, experiential Indian F&B brand—with an expanding footprint across India, Dubai, Singapore, and soon, London.

Anand Sweets

Disrupting Taste, One Innovation at a Time

Dadu didn’t just inherit a family business—he rewired it. His approach fuses culinary R&D, brand storytelling, and modern retail design to elevate every aspect of the Anand experience.

Sweets as souvenirs: Dadu was among the first to champion Indian mithai as a gifting category, creating hampers that compete with Swiss chocolate boxes and French macarons.

Tech meets tradition: He’s introduced AI-driven inventory forecasting to ensure zero-waste perishable logistics across 40+ stores.

Design-first packaging: Anand’s festive boxes are now designed in collaboration with Indian artists and fashion houses—making mithai Instagrammable and collectible.

Chef-powered labs: Dadu has brought in award-winning chefs to co-create seasonal products like kesar-pistachio energy bars, masala truffle laddoos, and sugar-free gulab jamun popsicles.

Anand Sweets

Branding India’s Sweet Power to the World

For Dadu, this isn’t about just sweets—it’s about soft power. He believes India’s culinary identity, especially in the festive and luxury food segment, has global potential.

Under his watch, Anand Sweets has entered airport retail, partnered with luxury hotels, and now serves curated mithai at international weddings, corporate gifting programs, and even Michelin-style tasting menus.

And the numbers back him: annual revenue has grown 4X in five years, with direct-to-consumer online sales now making up 30% of the business, thanks to a stunning Shopify-powered global storefront.

The Culture-First Leadership Mindset

What makes Ankush Dadu different isn’t just innovation—it’s respect for legacy. He has preserved Anand’s iconic recipes while modernizing everything around them. He invests in training artisans, digitizing recipe archives, and documenting culinary heritage that’s often lost in generational transitions.

He’s not just building a brand—he’s preserving a craft, and doing it at scale.

Anand Sweets

Interesting Facts About Ankush Dadu & Anand Sweets:

Started working in the kitchen at age 16, shadowing his grandfather’s master halwai.
Anand Sweets products are now available in 11 countries through curated export boxes.
Launched India’s first luxury mithai bar—a 10-course plated experience blending molecular gastronomy with Indian classics.
Grew Anand’s festive season sales by 300% in 2023 through experiential marketing and influencer campaigns.
Building a culinary school for Indian sweets artisans, opening in 2026.

The Mithai Mogul of Modern India

Ankush Dadu is part of a new generation of Indian entrepreneurs who don’t just build businesses—they build narratives, break molds, and export culture.

In his hands, mithai has become movement. And Anand Sweets isn’t just a heritage brand—it’s a symbol of how old-world legacy can lead the new-world order.

He isn’t chasing disruption. He’s sweetly engineering it.

Ankush Dadu is taking the soul of India’s sweet legacy global—combining culinary innovation, luxury branding, and digitized heritage to transform Anand Sweets into a billion-rupee powerhouse.

#AnkushDadu
#AnandSweets
#FastestGrowingLeaders2025
#LuxuryFoodIndia
#SweetDisruption
#GlobalIndianBrands
#CulinaryInnovation
#TheCoverStory

Business Story

Amrit Acharya: Building the Infrastructure of a New World

Published

4 weeks ago

May 11, 2025

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As legacy supply chains crumble under 20th-century weight, Zetwerk’s co-founder Amrit Acharya is designing a future where global manufacturing is faster, smarter, and infinitely scalable.

By The Cover Story | Fastest Growing Leaders in the World, 2025

Manufacturing was never supposed to be cool. But Amrit Acharya didn’t get the memo.

At 34, the co-founder and CEO of Zetwerk is not just leading India’s fastest-scaling industrial unicorn—he’s re-architecting global supply chains with the kind of precision and ambition typically reserved for aerospace engineers or fintech disruptors. And yet, here he is—building the backbone of modern civilization, one factory at a time.

In 2025, The Cover Story names Amrit Acharya among the Fastest Growing Leaders in the World, not just for scaling a tech-enabled manufacturing marketplace, but for proving that the next generation of global infrastructure will come not from Silicon Valley—but from a new wave of leaders in industrial India.

From Invisible to Inevitable

Zetwerk didn’t start with glamour. It started with grit. In 2018, Amrit Acharya and his co-founders took on a problem that most tech entrepreneurs ignored: fragmented, inefficient, and outdated manufacturing supply chains that left millions in the dark ages.

Today, Zetwerk is a global manufacturing OS, quietly powering critical infrastructure across industries—renewable energy, aerospace, automotive, electronics, defense. From turbines to railcars to EV components, if it’s being built at scale, there’s a good chance Zetwerk is behind it.

Under Amrit’s leadership, Zetwerk has grown into a $2.8 billion behemoth operating across India, Southeast Asia, the U.S., and the Middle East—while remaining profitable, asset-light, and dangerously underestimated.

The Quiet Revolution of Infrastructure-as-a-Service

What Amazon did for retail and Stripe did for payments, Zetwerk is doing for manufacturing: removing the friction, standardizing the process, and digitizing the future.

With a network of 10,000+ suppliers and AI-powered project tracking tools, Amrit has created a category-defining model: manufacturing as a managed service. Governments are buying into it. Fortune 500s are betting on it. And startups are building on it.

This isn’t outsourcing—it’s smart-sourcing, powered by data, operational transparency, and a deep understanding of industrial complexity.

The Leader as Builder, Not Celebrity

In a time when founders compete more on Twitter than in boardrooms, Amrit Acharya’s silence is deafening—and strategic. He doesn’t do hype cycles or vision-board keynotes. He builds.

A former McKinsey consultant and IIT Kharagpur graduate, Acharya believes in operational excellence over media appearances. But that hasn’t stopped global investors, analysts, and even sovereign infrastructure bodies from taking notice.

Because while others pitch the future, he’s already manufacturing it.

India’s Soft Power Now Has a Hard Tech Backbone

Amrit represents a new kind of Indian entrepreneur: one who’s not just building for India, but from India, for the world.

Zetwerk is not a localization story. It’s a deglobalization antidote. In a post-COVID, geopolitically fractured world, Acharya’s platform offers something rare: a trusted, scalable, neutral manufacturing partner that can plug into any economy’s industrial blueprint.

And in doing so, he’s quietly turning India into the world’s decentralized factory of the future—without the headlines, but with undeniable impact.

The New Order Is Being Built—Literally

Amrit Acharya and Zetwerk aren’t disrupting an industry—they’re laying the foundation for a new industrial order. As global leaders scramble to retrofit outdated systems, Acharya is already two moves ahead—designing the infrastructure of resilience, speed, and autonomy.

In a world that needs to be rebuilt—economically, digitally, physically—the builders will inherit the future. And Amrit Acharya is already standing on its factory floor.

#AmritAcharya
#Zetwerk
#FastestGrowingLeaders2025
#ManufacturingRevolution
#BuildTheFuture
#IndiaGlobalPower
#IndustrialTech
#TheCoverStory

The Cover Story World is a premier global platform that showcases the world’s most influential and fastest-growing leaders across business, innovation, culture, and impact. Known for its authoritative rankings, exclusive leadership features, and international summits, The Cover Story highlights the people and ideas redefining success in the 21st century. From industry disruptors to purpose-driven entrepreneurs, it’s where visionary leadership meets global recognition—amplifying stories that inspire, influence, and lead the world forward.