‘Agritech’ is a combination of technology and innovation in agriculture. [Could you define it a bit more?]

With an aim to make the farm-to-table process more efficient, sustainable, and safe, the development of agritech is one of the most powerful tools for the Indian economy.

Did you know?

According to a World Bank article, agriculture holds the key to end extreme poverty, boost shared prosperity and feed a projected 9.7 billion people by 2050. Growth in the agricultural sector is two to four times more effective than rise in incomes, among the poorest, compared to other sectors.

This agriculture-driven growth is as real as the risk of climate change and is affecting crop yields, especially in the world’s most food-insecure regions. The Indian food industry holds huge growth potential considering its rising contribution to world food trade every year, and as highlighted in IES 2035: [link to the site / report]

Agriculture is the primary source of livelihood for about 58 per cent of India’s population.

Particularly the food processing industry in India is of prime interest to tech start-ups as it accounts for 32% of India’s total food market; making it one of the largest industries in India; ranked fifth in terms of production, consumption, export and expected growth. It contributes about:

• 8.80% and 8.39% of Gross Value Added (GVA) in Manufacturing and Agriculture respectively,
• 13% of India’s exports and
• 6% of total industrial investment.

From bridging the gap between small- and large-scale businesses to improving the economic status of farmers, smart farming has had an immensely important role to play. [A bit more info on smart farming will be good]

Farmers and Agritech start-ups have shot up over the past few years due to large digital penetration and funding, supported by the government, which has driven the growth in Agritech.

[Some infographics or visual stats to show the numbers will be good…] [Is there any visual you have in mind for the banner image too?]

The Indian Government aims to boost innovation and entrepreneurship in agriculture and has introduced a new AGRI-UDAAN programme in order to mentor start-ups and enable them to connect with potential investors. The Government has also launched the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana (PMKSY) with an investment of Rs 50,000 crore (US$ 7.7 billion) aimed at the development of irrigation sources to provide a permanent solution for drought prone areas.

[Are there any other govt. measures? Would be good to add a few more]

Road Ahead

The outlook for this year is geared towards driving innovation, more data collaboration, easy working capital solutions and providing digital infrastructure to the Agribusiness sector in India.

Agritech trends have the potential to disrupt age-old agricultural practices and benefit developed, as well as developing countries, where game-changing technologies are adopted at a rapid pace. Let’s look at some of them:

Among other inventions, we have autonomous and robotic vehicles that are developed for farming functions, like mechanical weeding, application of fertilizer, and harvesting fruits. The introduction of remote-controlled drones, along with the lightweight and powerful hyperspectral exposure cameras which are used to calculate biomass development and fertilization standing of crops, opens the sector for smart farm management. Agritech also provides decision-tree models that let farmers differentiate between plant diseases based on collected data. Virtual fence technologies permit livestock management based on signals and sensors attached to livestock. [Any visual or stats around this?]

Untapped Agritech opportunity in India

• Employment rationalization – Agriculture employs 50% of India’s workforce, but contributes only 18% of the GDP. | Solutions that enable farm automation and aggregation will rationalize and gainfully redistribute the workforce.
• Stakeholder empowerment – Digitised Mandis and FPOs will bring more transparency into transactions. | Farmers need more sales channels; data and market connect can empower every stakeholder.
• Streamlining supply – Post harvest loss amounts to USD 13 billion. | Demand driven cold chains, warehouse monitoring and market linkage can significantly increase farmer incomes.
• Processing Exports – India ranks among top 5 countries in food processing, and by 2024, the sector will employ 9 million people. | Streamlining and traceability will improve farmer income and exports.
• Resource Maximisation – 80% of India’s fresh water is used in agriculture. | Reduction in usage of water and pesticides is a significant business opportunity.
• Digital Infrastructure – There is lack of data and insights at ground and farmer level. | Along with laying the digital work, solutions that build a layer of data will transform DBT schemes, insurance and loan disbursal.

With advancement in technology and the positive effects it has had on farming, the sector is clearly seeing how Agritech is indeed the new opportunity. 

As a result, there has been a wave of agritech startups in India over the last few years, which are looking to address concerns such as supply chain management and enhancing the sector’s marketing infrastructure. Let’s take a look at some of these Indian Agtech startups, which tackle local issues and hold potential to change the face of agritech sector; eventually raising farmer incomes. [hyperlink to all companies please]

1. Boheco – Bombay Hemp Company is an Agro-based company, which reimagines the future of agriculture and sustainable living with hemp as focus. They assist local farmers to cultivate crops by providing optimum seeds, sharing best practices in cultivation techniques, and innovating Agro-products.
2. Crofarm – aims to build a supply chain, supporting farmers and provide businesses with the freshest produce efficiently. It has over 10,000 farmers on its network, and has partnered with Reliance Retail, Grofers, Big Basket, Jubilant Foodworks, Big Bazar and Metro Foods to change the way businesses procure their produce.
3. Agricx Lab – provides fast, precise, portable, and easy image-based quality assessment tools to remove subjectivity out of quality assessment and make every transaction smoother and without loss. It currently offers warehouses and enterprises solutions to expand the production supply chain.
4. Gold Farm – offers a mobile app-based booking platform for tractors for Indian farmers. They also provide access to solar water pumps in power deficit regions in India. With 100+ employees spread across states, their mission is to facilitate doubling of farm income for a million farmers in India by 2022.
5. Agrowave – a Supply chain startup, which acts as a mobile e-vendor of fruits & vegetables, serving small & medium businesses directly from the farmers.  It helps Indian farmers in mapping production & demand using machine learning, to plan use of blockchain technology for traceability and to use AI to map quality with price. [is this yet to be done?]
6. Fasal – It is an AI-powered IoT platform for Agriculture ecosystem, which records a variety of growing conditions on the farm. It then uses artificial intelligence and data science to make on-farm predictions, before delivering the insights anywhere on any device including (iOS, Android, Tablet and Web)
7. Airwood – pioneers the use of Real-time Intelligence to solve agricultural problems with next-gen agri-data science and AI. Their Real-time Precision Agriculture Solutions stabilises, and doubles yields by monitoring over 50 farm variables, and the Predictive Supply Engine controls planting-material and Just-in-time harvests to perfectly match supply and demand, thereby doubling prices and farmer income. [relevant hyperlinks for their product please]
8. CropIn – a leading Agri-tech organization provides SaaS based solutions to agribusinesses globally, enabling clients to analyze and interpret data to derive real-time actionable insights on standing crops, thus allowing businesses to utilize technology to effectively drive initiatives around Digitization, Sustainability, Compliance, and Traceability. They have digitized 3.1 million acres of farmland, enriched lives of nearly 1.6 million farmers, and gathered data on 265 crops and 3,500 crop varieties.
9. Intello Labs – is India’s most awarded AgriTech startup, has developed computer vision-based solutions using images as key data for deriving insights and actionable recommendations. It is using  image-based analysis and AI for quality grading of commodities, pest/disease detection in crops, yield estimation, etc.
10. TESSOL – (Thermal Energy Service Solutions Pvt Ltd) is a unique innovation-driven venture aimed at solving temperature-controlled food and pharma distribution problems in India. Over the last 5 years, with a proven edge in technology and exceptional execution capability, TESSOL has positioned itself as a pioneer in the cold storage area and is currently the leading supplier of last mile solutions to the e-commerce segment.

[Where possible, it may be a good idea to add info on each of their funding status, revenue, growth or any other contribution nos or awards / recognition, which will excite the readers]