aQysta
- Shanti Marga, Sanepa, Lalitpur
About Company
aQysta’s inspiration comes from our Nepalese CEO, Pratap Thapa, who grew up in a farmer community in Nepal. His parents had their farm right next to a river but could not get the water from the river to the farm. Instead, they depended on rainfall and tried to ‘catch the rain’ when the first monsoon rains came. The question that stayed on his mind was: “Can the river’s power be used to lift water to nearby farms?”
Pratap grew up to become an engineer and received a scholarship to do an MSc program at the Technical University of Delft, the Netherlands. He met aQysta’s co-founders, Fred Henny and Lennart Budelmann and started working on solutions for his community. Together they developed the “Barsha Pump”, a renewable irrigation pump that uses the power of flowing water sources (like rivers) to lift water to farmlands without external inputs. Today, Pratap’s parents and more than 7.000 smallholder farmers in 27 countries benefit from this technology.
However, work remains to be done. While access to irrigation water is essential to increasing farmers’ productivity, aQysta has seen that many farmers still generate insufficient incomes to sustain themselves and their families with farming. Farmers need proper training, quality farming inputs (like seeds and fertilisers), and a market where they can receive a fair price for their products to further increase their productivity and profitability.
These insights encouraged aQysta to start its Farm Incubator, in which we link farmers to premium markets that provide higher prices for their harvest. We then prepare the farmers to be able to supply to these premium markets by providing the right capital, knowledge, quality inputs, and technology.
