The World’s Largest Dairy Cooperative Just Built an AI Dairy Farming Platform on 50 Years of Data

AI Dairy Farming Meets Its Biggest Test in Gujarat: Amul’s Sarlaben Reaches 3.6 Million Women Farmers

In a bold leap that fuses decades of cooperative data with cutting-edge artificial intelligence, India’s dairy giant Amul has launched what may be the world’s most ambitious AI-powered farming initiative—not in a tech hub, but in the villages of Gujarat, where 3.6 million women milk producers now have access to Sarlaben, an AI assistant built to transform dairy farming from the ground up.

Unveiled at the AI Impact Summit 2026 and backed by India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) alongside the EkStep Foundation, Amul AI is more than a chatbot. It is a real-time, personalized advisory engine trained on over 50 years of cooperative records, designed to deliver veterinary guidance, breeding insights, feed optimization, and weather alerts—instantly, in the farmer’s own language.

The Data Backbone Behind Sarlaben

What sets Amul AI apart is the sheer depth and scale of its training data. The platform taps into:

• Over 200 crore (2 billion) milk procurement transactions annually
• Veterinary treatment records from 1,200+ doctors covering nearly 3 crore (30 million) cattle
• Approximately 70 lakh (7 million) artificial inseminations conducted each year
• ISRO satellite imagery for fodder production mapping
• A cattle census updated every five years

Every animal in the system has a unique digital ID, with detailed records of feed intake, disease history, and milking performance. This data-rich foundation allows Sarlaben to deliver cattle-specific, hyper-localized advice—something most agri-tech startups can only dream of.

From Lab to Field: How Sarlaben Works

Accessible via the Amul Farmer mobile app (already downloaded by over 1 million users on Android and iOS) and through voice calls for feature phone users, Sarlaben is integrated with Amul’s Automatic Milk Collection System (AMCS) and the Pashudhan app. Farmers can ask questions about animal health, breeding cycles, feed management, and even local weather risks—and receive answers in Gujarati, with plans to expand to 20 Indian languages using the government’s Bhashini framework.

“AI is about taking dependable, verified information directly to the farmer—instantly and in a language they are comfortable with,” said Jayen Mehta, Managing Director of the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF). “By using decades of structured data and integrating it with our operational systems, the platform will help farmers make timely decisions that improve animal productivity and income.”

India’s Dairy Productivity Paradox

India is the world’s largest milk producer, generating 347.87 million tonnes in 2024-25—more than double the US output. Yet, per-animal milk yield remains among the lowest globally. The reasons are systemic: small herd sizes, poor-quality feed, limited rural veterinary access, and widespread lack of modern husbandry knowledge.

Amul’s network spans over 18,600 villages in Gujarat, where farmers supply more than 350 lakh litres (35 million litres) of milk daily. Information asymmetry has long been a bottleneck—especially for farmers in remote areas facing emergencies at odd hours. Amul AI is designed to close that gap.

The Cooperative Advantage

Unlike most agri-tech startups that scramble to collect data, Amul already had it—thanks to its cooperative structure built over five decades under India’s White Revolution. This institutional foundation allowed Amul to leapfrog the data-gathering phase and focus on making information actionable at the farmer level.

Experts tracking the dairy-tech space are optimistic. Sreeshankar Nair, Founder of Brainwired, highlights three key challenges Sarlaben could address: farmer awareness, access to quality veterinary guidance, and connectivity to grazing and feed resources. “If AI can integrate local dialects of Indian languages, India can have White Revolution 2.0,” he says.

Saswata Narayan Biswas, Director of the Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA), frames it as AI embedded in a cooperative framework—an “instrument of inclusive rural transformation.” The platform’s predictive disease detection, oestrus tracking, optimized feed formulation, and localized weather advisories are abilities Amul has been building for years; AI simply accelerates and democratizes them.

The Road Ahead: Scale, Inclusion, and Impact

The launch has drawn high-level government support. Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel officially launched the platform, which will be showcased at the AI Impact Summit 2026. MeitY and EkStep Foundation are acknowledged as key partners in building the AI layer.

Farmers outside Amul’s network can also access general dairying and animal husbandry information through the app. At present, Amul AI already covers more cattle—nearly 30 million—than most national veterinary databases worldwide.

The real test, however, lies in execution. Will Sarlaben reach the farmers who need it most—those with limited smartphone access or digital literacy? Will Bhashini-enabled dialect support be rolled out quickly enough? Will AI-driven advisories translate into measurable yield improvements?

If successful, Amul AI could mark the dawn of White Revolution 2.0—an inclusive, data-driven transformation of India’s dairy sector. If not, it risks becoming another well-intentioned tech project that fails to cross the last mile.

Amul has built an AI system grounded in half a century of real cooperative transactions, real animals, and real farmers. Such an infrastructure is arguably the most credible foundation for AI dairy farming at scale. Whether it fulfills its promise will depend on execution—and on whether Sarlaben’s voice can reach those last few miles that have always been the hardest to cross.

Tags: AI dairy farming, Amul AI, Sarlaben, Gujarat dairy, women farmers, AI in agriculture, White Revolution 2.0, digital dairy, cooperative data, Bhashini, rural AI, livestock management, milk productivity, Indian dairy, agri-tech, MeitY, EkStep Foundation, ISRO satellite data, vernacular AI, dairy tech innovation

Viral Sentences:

• “AI dairy farming has found its most ambitious deployment yet—not in a Silicon Valley lab, but in the villages of Gujarat.”
• “Amul AI is about taking dependable, verified information directly to the farmer—instantly and in a language they are comfortable with.”
• “If AI can integrate local dialects of Indian languages, India can have White Revolution 2.0.”
• “This is not a technology upgrade, but an instrument of inclusive rural transformation.”
• “Amul has built an AI system grounded in half a century of real cooperative transactions, real animals, and real farmers.”
• “Whether Sarlaben’s voice can reach those last few miles that have always been the hardest to cross.”

,