Description
Growz is an AI-powered pocket-agronomist mobile application that enbales farmers to receive a step-by-step agronomic plan from sowing to harvest covering inputs, fertilisers, plant-protection products and field operations. A built-in AI agent answers user questions, diagnoses diseases from photographs, and recommends precise dosages by active substance. Growz also operates a a knowledge base distributed through social media, and emerging agro-vet marketplace and links to finance, instalment-purchase schemes and crop insurance.
Technology
Growz is a cloud-based mobile application available on Android and iOS, centred around an AI-powered chatbot as its core functionality. The chatbot is built on a custom AI agent powered by Google Gemini and trained on a proprietary dataset compiled by the Growz team, including scientific research, books, articles, and disease imagery. The platform’s knowledge base is curated by two in-house PhD specialists responsible for maintaining Latin-named disease taxonomies, while all novel AI-generated responses are validated by a six-person in-house agronomy team before being delivered to farmers. Farmers register their plots using GIS-based field digitisation capabilities down to fractions of a hectare, selecting crops from a database of 130 varieties. The application also allows farmers to maintain digital diaries of field operations and farming activities, enabling the chatbot to provide more tailored and accurate agronomic advice. Through the chatbot, farmers can receive recommendations on crop protection products from a curated database of approximately 2,000 certified agricultural inputs sourced from licensed distributors, alongside information linked to a database of around 3,000 plant diseases. As of April 2026, additional functionalities — including agro-insurance services, bank-integrated instalment payments, and plot-specific recommendations based on weather and satellite data — are in beta or testing phases.
Target
Growz primarily serves smallholder farmers in Uzbekistan. As of April 2026, Growz reports more than 100 000 cumulative app downloads and over 30 000 daily active users in Uzbekistan. The team has held 12 in-person farmer events with regional administrations (hokimiyats) to date and is launching a country-wide regional roadshow in May 2026.
Business model
Growz operates a freemium model. The free tier covers one crop with limited AI-agent interactions and full access to the verified agro-vet marketplace, knowledge base and social-media educational content. The paid tier — USD 3.5/month or USD 20/year — unlocks unlimited crops and unlimited AI-agent interactions. Initial product development was supported by a World Bank grant.
Impact
According to the Growz team, farmers using the application increase their yields and operational efficiency by approximately 32 percent and avoid up to 1.5 tonnes of additional CO₂ emissions per hectare by following AI-curated, dosage-precise recommendations on plant-protection products and fertilisers. The platform replaces paper notebooks still widely used by Uzbek smallholders with an interactive digital diary, helping farmers track expenses, control input use and act on time-sensitive agro-tech tasks. By packaging farmer activity history, crop, plot geometry and forecast yield, Growz acts as a trust layer for the financial sector — historically reluctant to lend to a risk-prone smallholder segment — enabling microcredit, in-kind input financing and crop insurance via integrated banks and insurers.
Partners
World Bank; TBC Bank; Optombank
Four Betters
Better production
Better environment
