Kheyti is a nonprofit organization headquartered in India whose core product is Greenhouse-in-a-Box, a low-cost greenhouse that costs 90% less than the market, protects crops from environmental risks, and grows 7x food with 50x water efficiency. Kheyti offers farmers financing, inputs, advisory, and market linkage services. This integrated solution delivers up to $1,200 additional climate-resilient incomes/year/farmer and 2.5M liters of water savings/farmer.
The designing and engineering for the Greenhouse-in-a-Box were being outsourced to greenhouse design consultants and manufacturers in India, Israel, and America. Kheyti would provide these teams with requirements around temperature control, pest protection, humidity, rain protection, etc. But with outsourcing comes delays and gaps in collaboration, especially when working with a global team. Kheyti needed faster turnaround times to test designs on-site to ensure they were maximizing and evolving their farmer-centric solutions.
Kheyti had four main goals in mind:
Kheyti created their in-house design team, and with the assistance of the Autodesk Foundations program, they were equipped with Autodesk Fusion 360. They recognized training was a pivotal factor in the team’s success and worked with KETIV to build a flexible training schedule that complied with the team member’s various time zones.
The training began with Fusion 360 Fundamentals to lay the necessary foundation for using the software. It transitioned to custom training using Kheyti’s actual projects to allow practice application and deliverables at the close of training. A deep understanding of how to use the software to solve day-to-day problems was vital to Kheyti, and KETIV helped them achieve that through hands-on training around the greenhouse design itself and the tools and materials needed.
Thanks to Fusion 360’s cloud-based, single development platform and the skills learned in training, the Kheyti design team accelerated production and began maximizing the use of their research and development farm to test prototypes. The ability to make quick changes and iterations in Fusion 360 to adapt to rapidly changing decision-making and local materials availability helped their process immensely. Kheyti’s goal of continuing to invest in their employees and increasing the team’s capacity on an engineering front was achieved. Putting their skills to use, the design team designed an improved greenhouse that took half the time to build, decreased labor from 18 people to 10, and decreased cost by 10%. The team’s ability to design, ideate, and test their designs reduced the timeframe from idea to implementation, allowing Kheyti to continue to provide small farmers with affordability and end-to-end services.
“Adopting Fusion 360 and learning through KETIV really empowered Kheyti’s employees to become innovators themselves, as they were able to gain the skills to navigate from idea to 3D model, and further prototyping, testing, and implementation on-field. Being a part of that entire process was a very impactful and rewarding experience.”
