How Are Agritech Startups Transforming Indian Agriculture?

Small and fragmented land holdings, poor seed quality, a lack of mechanization, a lack of analytics and data, a low yield per unit crop, and a reliance on middlemen are some of the severe difficulties that Indian agriculture is experiencing today.

Since the beginning of the green revolution in the 1960s, there has been no significant change in Indian agriculture. India is at a turning point, with the agri-tech revolution quickly following the ed-tech and fin-tech revolutions.

India is currently the country with the second-largest agricultural land area in the world. Agri-business start-ups have a lot of potential in India, as over 60% of rural people depend on agriculture for their primary source of income. According to research, the global Agri-Tech market will be about. The present market is estimated to be worth $204 million, or 1% of the potential $24 billion by 2025.

Current Agriculture Challenges in India
Small and fragmented land holdings, poor seed quality, a lack of mechanization, a lack of analytics and data, a low yield per unit crop, and a reliance on middlemen are some of the severe difficulties that Indian agriculture is experiencing today.
The Indian agricultural sector is also severely hampered by the lack of unified physical marketplaces, poor transportation and storage capabilities, the presence of fraud in the unorganized agricultural markets, the scarcity of organized credit, the lack of pricing and market transparency, and other maladies.

The ecosystem now lacks the cutting-edge technical know-how utilized globally, an abundance of analytics and data, mechanized farming, and improved R&D.

How Indian Agriculture is Being Revolutionized by Agritech Start-ups
There are already 48 unicorn start-ups in India, but none of them are involved in agri-tech. So, this is a significant growth opportunity.

From providing micro-level on-the-ground support like soil analysis of a particular agricultural field to macro-level services like forecasting environmental consequences using satellite pictures, different Agri-Tech businesses are operating in a variety of ways. Agri-tech players are changing agriculture as it has historically been practised at every point along the value chain.

With the use of e-marketplaces, modern Agri-Tech businesses are focusing on linking the physical and digital markets so that producers can sell their goods throughout India without having to be physically present. They offer value-added services like safe payments, quality standardisation, and logistics. The agribusiness has adopted technology to enhance food traceability and sustainability.

In order to deliver agricultural inputs at a lower cost, the farm inputs market is seamlessly integrating technology with physical infrastructure. Farmers are being helped by businesses that specialize in precision agriculture and farm management to increase their yields by up to 30%. Similar to this, financial service providers benefit about 30% of farm households through improved access to credit and 65% of farm families through access to crop insurance.

The FaaS concept is also being seen as the agriculture of the future. Through a pay-per-use or subscription-based business model, farming as a service provides cutting-edge solutions for agricultural and related services. With the aid of these technologies, stakeholders may make smart, data-driven decisions that will increase productivity and efficiency.

Government initiatives have speed up the development of the agri-tech industry. The establishment of the Department of Science and Technology and the National Centre for Management and Agricultural Extension in Hyderabad (MANAGE) has given the sector a huge boost. The latter's main objective was to speed up Agri-Tech start-ups by offering mentoring, business connections, and advice on investor pitches.

More than 20 agritech start-ups have raised more than Rs. 920 crores in total in 2020 alone through venture financing, equity, and traditional debt rounds.

"AgriTech in India is experiencing a boom in investments from all over the world as it reaches an inflection point. According to Bilal Khimji, Chief Strategy Officer at TradeBridge, "Our goal is to harness technology to enable and support, the very huge, albeit antiquated, Agri-Commodity industry.

To Sum Up
Despite being a sector that employs over half of the workforce in India, agriculture has not yet participated in the tech revolution. The Agri ecosystem is expected to undergo a tectonic shift as a result of the dominance of Agri-Tech Unicorns in the coming decade.