How Startup Founders in the Agritech Space are Successfully Leveraging Technology to build Profitable Businesses and overcome Farmer biases

As part of its #IvyConnect Engagements, IvyCamp conducted an online discussion for S. P. Jain Institute of Management and Research students with the founders of IvyCap Ventures Advisors Private Limited Portfolio Companies - Deep Rooted and Eggoz Nutrition , to talk about how they are successfully leveraging technology in their #agritech startup and successfully navigating challenges along the way.

One of the key challenges founders of agritech startups face is the resistance of farmers to use technology and change their familiar processes. One key to getting farmers on board is to demonstrate quickly and simply how your solution will address one of the more challenges they currently face. For example, one challenge for farmers is that they spend money on inputs such as seeds, fertilizer, etc. but they cannot quantitatively guarantee the output, yield, and money made from selling the produce. Deep Rooted is addressing this by handholding the farmer through the end-to-end process – advising on what to grow and how to grow through agricultural specialists who use technology to assess soil, humidity, temperature, etc. Once the farmer sees the end benefits in terms of increased revenue on an ongoing basis as the customer is willing to pay more for better quality produce, they are on board to adapt the technology.

Another area where the value of technology is seen, is in the supply chain, to deliver the produce as fresh as possible to the consumer. Eggoz Nutrition follows FIFO (First In First Out) model where their product goes to consumption centers to be tested and packed and then sent to nearby stores for sale. The Deep Rooted founder mentioned, as the nature of their produce is highly perishable, they use technology to forecast demand and guide farmers to produce as per demand leading to an adequate amount of produce per season. The distribution production centers then send the fresh produce to nearby centers. This leads to less waste management and decreases the loss for farmers compared to when they were harvesting the traditional way.

To determine the quality of the produce, Eggoz's founder mentioned, the majority of quality control work comes during pre-harvest sessions where they take care of the right feed and the right environment for the birds which impacts the quality of the eggs. In the processing centers, samples are taken out for testing and checked if the quality of the eggs is good or not. Parameters like the height of the egg, the color of the yolk, and the PH of the eggs are considered to check the freshness of the product, and all these tests depend on an advanced technology setup.

Agritech startups are paving the way for more and more farmers to benefit from the application of technology in their processes. Farmers are seeing benefits from reduced bottlenecks in the supply chain, less wastage from optimum utilization of their produce, expanded reach of their agricultural products, and higher revenues as customers are willing to pay more for fresher and better quality produce.?The startups are also benefiting from their ability to build scalable and sustainable businesses.

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