WRMS: Pioneering Parametric Insurance and Data-Driven Climate Resilience for Indian Agriculture
In a country where 132 million families depend on agriculture, weather is the ultimate business risk. For decades, traditional crop insurance in India was broken—penetration was less than 10%, and claims often took months, if not years, to settle. Anuj Kumbhat, the Co-founder of Weather Risk Management Services (WRMS), recognized this systemic failure while working at ICICI Lombard. Today, his company is a global leader in "Parametric Insurance," using 200-year simulations and a massive network of 15,000 weather stations to provide instant, data-driven security to over 10 million farmers.
Anuj's journey from a Chartered Accountant in Jodhpur to a climate-tech pioneer is a masterclass in leveraging deep industry insight. Alongside co-founder Sonu Agrawal (an IIT Kanpur alumnus), he has built WRMS into a multi-revenue-stream powerhouse that manages risk for governments, banks, and global corporations like UPL. By transitioning from simple Excel models to advanced AI-driven satellite monitoring, WRMS is proving that technology can finally shield the most vulnerable communities from the unpredictable nature of climate change.
The Problem of "Basis Risk"
Traditional index insurance often fails because government weather stations are too far from the actual farms. A farmer might suffer a drought, but if the nearest station 50km away records rain, he gets no payout. WRMS solved this "Basis Risk" by engineering low-cost Automatic Weather Stations (AWS) and deploying them directly in rural blocks, ensuring that every payout matches the actual local weather conditions.
The Genesis: From ICICI Lombard to Global Pilot
Anuj's exposure to insurance began in the early days of privatization. While at ICICI Lombard, he and Sonu Agrawal designed the world's first **Weather Index Insurance** for smallholder farmers. The pilot was a success, proving that claims could be settled instantly based on data rather than tedious physical surveys. Recognizing the massive 132-million-farmer opportunity, they left their comfortable corporate roles to launch WRMS in 2004.
In those early days, "short-term tech" didn't exist. There was no cloud, no Big Data, and "AI" in agriculture meant "Artificial Insemination." "We started crunching data in Excel... moving around in buses and trains to meet thousands of farmers personally," Anuj recalls. They spent years digitizing 15,000 manual rain gauge records from government paper books, creating the historical database that now powers their predictive models.
"If you want to be an entrepreneur, you have to burn all your bridges. You can't put one foot in a job and one foot in a startup. You have to give everything to it, or your heart won't be in the system."
Engineering Resilience: The AWS Revolution
The first major pivot for WRMS happened in 2006. After feedback from farmers about the distance of government stations, the team incubated at IIT Kanpur to engineer their own hardware. At the time, automatic weather stations were prohibitively expensive. Within two years, WRMS developed a low-cost AWS that allowed for large-scale deployment.
The WRMS Data Evolution
- Excel Modeling (2004): Initial risk evaluation based on manual government records.
- Hardware Engineering (2006-2008): Development of low-cost Automatic Weather Stations to settle contracts locally.
- SMS Advisory (2010): Providing localized weather forecasts via feature phones to help farmers make better crop decisions.
- AI & Satellite (Current): Utilizing Sentinel-1 high-resolution imagery and machine learning to provide farm-level bespoke agricultural plans.
Scaling Impact: From Blocks to Individual Farms
Today, WRMS generates weather forecasts at a 3-kilometer grid, providing hyper-local insights that were once impossible. By combining satellite vegetation indices with soil moisture analysis across 10 countries, they offer a holistic "Climate-Short" platform. This allows them to move beyond insurance into Agricultural Advisory, helping farmers minimize risk before a catastrophic event even happens.
Their impact is global. WRMS has installed 11,000 weather stations for various institutions and governments across five countries. In India, they work with disaster management departments to provide early warnings to low-income communities, preventing loss of life and livelihood during extreme weather events.
WRMS: Impact at Scale (Jan 2026)
- Cumulative Reach: Serviced over 10 Million farmers to date.
- Active Support: Currently providing direct services to 500,000 farmers.
- Weather Infrastructure: 4,000 proprietary AWS and 11,000 stations sold globally.
- Strategic Backing: Investment from UPL in 2016 and grants from ILO and the **Ford Foundation**.
Founder's Wisdom: The Marwadi Risk Taker
Reflecting on two decades of entrepreneurship, Anuj Kumbhat attributes his success to his inherent curiosity and his "Marwadi genes." He defines an entrepreneur as someone who has the capacity and willingness to take risks when the odds are not in their favor. "What sets an entrepreneur apart from a professional is the gumption to bring together talent and resources to play on those big bets," he asserts.
Anuj's Guide for Future Founders
Perseverance is King: There is no alternative to hard work and perseverance. It takes decades to build a sustainable, scalable organization.
Nurture Resources: Identify the right talent and nurture them. Your team is what takes the vision forward when the odds are tough.
Stay Focused: Don't try to do too many things at once. Give up on short-term distractions to focus on long-term, fruitful opportunities.
The Meaning of Entrepreneurship
For Anuj Kumbhat, entrepreneurship is about creating resource outcomes that didn't exist before. It's the ability to take a vision—like instant crop insurance payouts—and engineering the hardware, software, and data pipelines to make it a reality. As climate change continues to intensify, WRMS stands as a critical pillar of global food security, proving that 200 years of data can indeed build a safer future for the world's most essential workers.
As WRMS expands its farm-level services, it remains a testament to the power of returning to one's roots and solving the problems of the "last mile." In the world of modern agriculture, Anuj Kumbhat and his team aren't just predicting the weather—they are managing the risk of a planet.
About the Guest
Anuj Kumbhat is the Co-founder and CEO of Weather Risk Management Services (WRMS). A Chartered Accountant and Company Secretary by training, Anuj spent over a decade in financial analysis and risk management at firms like HSBC and ICICI Lombard before co-founding WRMS in 2004. He is a member of the Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP) and has over 20 years of experience in project finance and climate risk. He is a pioneer in parametric insurance and localized weather data analytics, dedicated to using technology to enhance the livelihoods of smallholder farmers globally.
Weather Risk Management Services (WRMS) is a leading global climate-tech firm specializing in weather data analytics, parametric insurance, and agricultural risk management. Founded in 2004 and backed by UPL, the company operates a massive network of automatic weather stations and leverages satellite imagery and AI to provide hyper-local weather forecasts and crop advisory. WRMS serves millions of farmers and works with governments and institutions across five countries to build climate resilience and food security.