Role of AgriTech StartUps in improving Indian Farming

While the Indian economy has lifted millions out of poverty and bludgeoning service industry has prospered our economy, it can be stated without a doubt that India, was, is and will remain for the near future, a primarily agricultural nation.

What is happening???

• More than half of the Indian Population remains employed in tilling fields, growing crops and tending to livestock all of which comprise agricultural practices.
• The Indian Government understands the role of agriculture in Indian Economy and has committed to doubling the farmer’s income via a plethora of efforts like organic farming, the introduction of minimum support prices (MSPs) and modern technologies intervention.
• However, Indian farmers continue to suffer from losses and several niche areas for improvement remain in the agri-chain.

What can be done?

• The challenges before the various agricultural processes have created the need to rise for a market of agricultural technology products.
• This demand has spawned the rise of several agri-tech startups which are attempting to bridge the demand-supply gap between cold chains, warehouse monitoring solutions, and market linkages.
• Most of the agri-tech starts are focussing on improvements of the post-harvest agricultural supply chain as the post-harvest losses in the past year touched over Rs 93000 crores.
• In the fruit and vegetable sector, over 16% of all the produce goes to waste.
• Here, the role of agri-tech startups which can leverage modern technology like RFIDs, IoT and Data analytics to reduce food wastage can not be understated.

What did the Industrial data show?

As per a study released by the IT body, NASSCOM, over half of the Indian Agri-tech Industry has received more than 300% funding in the first half of the year 2019 than the entire year 2018.

The Year-on-year growth for the agri-tech startups has been a healthy 25%.