Notes From Mark Kahn's Podcast On 100xEntrepreneur

1. Mark Kahn had founded Omnivore, India’s first Agritech focused venture fund, in 2010 with the vision to make agriculture more profitable, stable, and sustainable along with Jinesh Shah.

“When we see agriculture in India, we see core agriculture, allied related financing, the risk management, the insurances, all of the food processing and when you add that all up, it winds up being about 25% of the Indian economy.”

2. The Indian government is more active in grains than in horticulture, livestock, aquaculture

3. Agritech startups are usually focused on the top 20% of Indian farmers that own about half of the land in the country, are more progressive and have a surplus in common & can invest.

4. Omnivore invested in Stellapps, Ecozen, Y-Cook, GramCover, MITRA, Skymet, Eruvaka, and FR8 out of the fund 1.

5. As part of Fund 2, Omnivore has invested in Doodhwala, a subscription-based hyperlocal delivery platform; DeHaat, a Patna-based agritech startup; AgNext, a sensing solutions startup that collects data across the agriculture and food value chain; TartanSense, an agritech robotic startup; and IntelloLabs, an agritech AI startup.

6. What value Omnivore adds to its portfolio companies

• Have a team of experts with a background in agriculture, agribusiness, food processing, rural development. Partner S Nagarajan has experience of running Mother Dairy. Reihem Roy was with the UN's international fund for agricultural development. Abhilash Sethi helped set up Mahindra’s precision farming division. 
• Bring serious subject matter expertise 
• We understand who Agribusinesses sourcing from, who they're selling to, so we help them tremendously with improving their strategies
• Also, business development is the single largest value that Omnivore bring into its portfolio by linking with the right players in the ecosystem.

7. Co-Invested with Nutreco in Eruvaka. They focus on a farmer that is very high income. The aquaculture industry is 50,000 farmers producing $5 billion of shrimp exports. You can have a direct interface with those farmers and still make money. 

8. Agritech startups are usually focused on the top 20% of Indian farmers that own about half of the land in the country, and are more progressive and have a surplus in common and can invest.

 Rural FinTech is probably the hottest theme for the last two years.

9. In 2015 and 16, there was a point of exhaustion when VCs realized that there is more to startups than just serving the needs of the top 25% of urban Indians.

10. A few core themes that define Agritech include farmer platform (DeHaat or Agrostar), B2B Agri marketplaces(Ninjacart, Farmley), rural FinTech (Gramcover), farm to consumer brands that are more FMCG oriented (YCook. Licious, FreshToHome, Country Delight)

Agriculture is on a slightly stronger footing than many other spaces. Permits are now being given to allow Food Distribution and food processing. Agriculture is going to continue marching on because it has to or everyone starves. So, Agritech startups over the course of the next year are relatively well-positioned and they will continue growing to find solutions to ensure that Agri value chains continue despite all the adversities and helping people get through this very difficult time.

11. The best CEOs are the most resilient, who can endure the difficult periods. And I think what's interesting is, we are now in a resilience test. As a result of COVID-19, funding is becoming more scarce. Business models are being tossed up into the air, and now we're going to see the difference between resilient and nonresilient CEOs And startup teams.

Listen to the full podcast here