India the land of Global AgTech Innovators - The FAB5

The emergence of the Indian AgTech sector has been one big trend seen over the past decade in Indian Agriculture.

The seeds of digital initiatives in agriculture in India were sown through the National Policy for Farmers 2007 (NPF2007) which talked about Information and Communication Technology (ICT) as part of its major goals and setting up of Gyan Chaupals as means to make digital technology-based services available for farmers. 

Further impetuous to AgTech was provided by the National Telecom Policy 2012, which had the vision to provide secure, reliable, affordable, and high-quality converged telecommunication services anytime, anywhere for an accelerated inclusive socio-economic development and focused on broadband connectivity and mobile penetration in rural areas. This is the reason we saw many companies as discussed in this article were founded in the period between 2010-2014. 

The pace was slow as the sector was new and the use of digital technology, except in the enterprise sector, was still in its infancy in the country. The drivers for these neo-agriculture players were the reduction in the cost of technology, advancement in technologies like Big Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, and the Internet of Things, and their widespread adoption in other enterprise-led domains.  

Subsequently, post-2014 there was a more focused effort by the Government, Private Sector, and fast-emerging Startup ecosystem to solve some of the inherent challenges of Indian agriculture. The conducive environment was created due to efforts by the Government of India including Startup India and Digital India. This was a very favorable environment for the AgTech sector in India. This is crucial for the currently vibrant Indian AgTech sector with some of our AgTech companies becoming world leaders. The rise of many of these companies has been nothing less than stellar in the past six or seven years with some of them becoming minicorns and one becoming a unicorn. 

Indian AgTech - Leap Frog to Global Stage & Scale

The Indian AgTech ecosystem has been growing at the fastest pace ever with some of the top names in the sector like AgroStar, CropIn, DeHaat, Ninjacart, and Stellapps gaining from the vibrant ecosystem and a push for innovation to solve challenges of Indian agriculture.

AgroStar

AgroStar is India’s foremost AgTech company with a mission of “Helping Farmers Win”. AgroStar was started with a vision to solve two of the biggest problems in Indian agriculture - Lack of guidance for scientific/sustainable farming and limited access to great quality farm inputs. Today, AgroStar serves millions of farmers across five Indian states via an omnichannel approach. Along the journey, AgroStar has built India’s largest agronomy advisory center, a highly engaged digital farmer network with over 5 million users, and a retail network of more than 15 hundred stores. These channels, powered by technology, work in tandem to enable us to solve the problems faced by farmers at scale. AgroStar’s solutions create a significant impact on the lives of farmers by helping them in increasing their crop yield, reduce their input expenditure, help grow better quality output, and access global and domestic markets to fetch the best rate for their output. AgroStar currently operates in the states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh. AgroStar is rapidly growing its agri-input platform and making strategic investments to solve other large farmer problems like market linkages and access to credit.

CropIn

CropIn is an Earth Observation & AI-led AgTech organization that empowers the farming community to ‘Re-imagine Agriculture with Data’. CropIn is focused on helping the world’s ag-ecosystem players to sustainably “maximize their per-acre value” by combining pixel-level data derived from satellite imagery, in combination with IoT and field intelligence. CropIn is engaging in a multi-disciplinary approach towards AI, Earth Observation, Agriculture, Meteorology, and Computer Sciences, all collaborating to bring meaningful insight to improve the ag-ecosystem and impact the livelihood of a farmer. CropIn provides SaaS solutions to agribusinesses, governments, and non-government organizations present in over 56 countries benefiting 7 million farmers with digital intervention over 16 million acres of land covering nearly 10 thousand crop varieties. CropIn thus enables businesses to leverage technology to effectively drive their initiatives around Digitization, Compliance, Predictability, Sustainability, and Traceability. CropIn's product suite enables data-driven farming by connecting all the stakeholders in the Ag-ecosystem. The portfolio of CropIn has products targeted toward different ecosystem players.

DeHaat

DeHaat is one of the fastest-growing start-ups in the Agri Tech sector and one of the very few companies providing end-to-end solutions and services to the farming community in India. The company is building AI-enabled technologies to revolutionize the supply chain and production efficiency in the farm sector. Currently, it is operating in the Indian states of Bihar, UP, Odisha, and West Bengal with 65,000+ farmers in its service network with a goal to bring its services to 5 million farmers by 2024. DeHaat is growing at a rate of 3-4x annually with phenomenal impact at the grassroots level. DeHaat is expanding with its flagship centers, a one-stop-shop for full-stack agricultural services. Farmer gets access to quality material inputs, coordinates the sale of their produce to institutional buyers, and receives science-based farming advisory promptly, often personalized based on their specific farming conditions. The chain of DeHaat Centres is dotting the countryside with most of them operated by the local franchise owners, also known as DeHaat Micro-Entrepreneur or DeHaat Coordinators. They are the reliable and friendly “human interface” on the ground who build trust with farmers and are an essential part of Last Mile Access that makes true differences in the overall value chain of our operations.

Ninjacart

Ninjacart is India’s largest Fresh Produce Supply Chain platform. They are pioneers in solving one of the toughest supply chain problems in the world by leveraging innovative technology. The company's platform connects producers of food directly with retailers, restaurants, and service providers using in-house applications that drive end-to-end operations. Currently, Ninjacart's supply chain is equipped to move vegetables and fruits from farmers to retailers and businesses across 7 cities, every day in less than 12 hours. Ninjacart has eliminated intermediaries by taking control of the Supply Chain by using technology and analytics. They have built a reliable, cost-effective, and high-speed logistics and infrastructure to solve inefficiencies and reduce food wastage in the Supply Chain. On one end, farmers get better prices and consistent demand, and on the other end, retailers receive fresh produce at competitive prices that are delivered to their doorstep. Ninjacart's high-quality and hygienically handled fresh produce ensures healthy food for consumers.

Stellapps

Stellapps is the first of its kind startup in India working towards the digitization of the dairy supply chain. It is an Internet of Things (IoT) startup with a primary focus on data acquisition and machine learning. Stellapps work for the largest crop on this planet, Milk, as there is a strong need for technological interventions, especially in the emerging markets where the yield per animal is low, traceability is inadequate and quality is not up to the mark. Digitization of the Agri-Dairy supply chain in the emerging markets is where Stellapps help unlock unprecedented value on a very large scale. The company digitizes & optimizes Milk Production, Milk Procurement & Coldchain Management through its SmartMoo platform (Full Stack IoT solution) which helps dairy farmers and cooperatives maximize profits while minimizing effort. Currently, the SmartMoo platform & suite of apps touch over two billion liters of milk annually. This platform is the first step toward creating measurable value for all stakeholders including farmers and provides measurable data for cattle insurance. Stellapps is supporting data arising out of tens of millions of liters of milk through the milk production, procurement, and cold chain flow across millions of farmers.

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About Author

DEEPAK PAREEK, CEO, AgriWatch & Technology Pioneer, World Economic Forum

https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/dpareek

Deepak is CEO of Indian Agribusiness Systems Limited, known as AgriWatch. AgriWatch is a consulting firm that provides market intelligence, research, and advisory services across the agribusiness value chain. AgriWatch is bridging the information and insight gap that exists in various sub-sectors of the agricultural economy in general and agricultural commodities trade in particular through the vast on-ground presence and use of cutting-edge data technology. AgriWatch is one of the pioneering Indian organizations to focus on market information collation, analysis, dissemination, and consulting in the agricultural space. AgriWatch has been one of the most experienced organizations in the sector with more than 20 years of experience working with one of the largest networks of farmers, traders, and intermediaries (more than half a million). It has one of the biggest data sets of agri-commodities in the private sector, second only to the government with time-series data for more than 15 years in some commodities.