The morning sun has barely risen over a vineyard in Nashik’s grape belt, but work has already begun.

Standing between neatly pruned vines, farmer Bapusaheb Salunkhe checks his phone — not for messages, but for labour. A few taps on WhatsApp, and a team is already assigned for the day. No frantic calls, no early-morning trips to a labour chowk, and no last-minute uncertainty.

“They come on time now,” he says simply. “Earlier it was hard to find labour, but after using this platform, my problem is solved.”

This shift from uncertainty to predictability is at the heart of what Bharat Intelligence is trying to build.

As co-founder Azaan Merchant puts it, “There was one problem which farmers kept talking about, the labour issue. It was just accepted as a problem, and no one challenged it.”

Why India’s farm labour problem needed fixing

India has over 144.3 million agricultural labourers, one of the largest workforces in the world. And yet, for something so massive, the system runs on guesswork.

There’s little reliable data on who these workers are, where they move, what skills they have, or when they’re available. Farmers, meanwhile, operate under constant pressure, especially in horticulture, where timing can make or break an entire harvest.

Traditionally, hiring happens in three ways:

Calling neighbours or nearby villages

Calling neighbours or nearby villages

Visiting a labour chowk at dawn and negotiating on the spot

Visiting a labour chowk at dawn and negotiating on the spot

Relying on middlemen (mukadams), often involving advances and uncertainty

Relying on middlemen (mukadams), often involving advances and uncertainty

The result? Mistrust on both sides. Farmers don’t know if workers will show up or if they’re skilled. Labourers don’t know if they’ll get paid or even get work the next day.

And because farm operations are time-sensitive, even a delay of a day or two can risk an entire crop cycle.

At the same time, the irony is stark: there is no shortage of labour in India, only a lack of coordination.

“We realised the problem wasn’t the absence of people,” says Gaurav Sanghai, co-founder of Bharat Intelligence. “It was visibility, liquidity, and coordination. So we decided to solve it as a matchmaking problem.”

The people who decided to solve it

For Azaan Merchant, the journey into rural India wasn’t planned.

“I spent almost 10 years working abroad, investing in enterprise technology companies across the UK and California,” he says. 

Over time, he grew a venture capital fund from $50 million to $400 million, working closely with companies that would go on to be valued at over Rs 10,000 crore.

But his........

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