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How agritech startups in India are empowering farmers.
India’s digital transformation coupled with a strong startup wave has been the catalyst behind fast economic recovery across sectors. The country today enjoys over 700 million smartphone users with 68 per cent on 4G, and this has been the bellwether for the rapid transformation happening here. The agriculture sector that forms the backbone of the country’s economy is not untouched by it, and the rise of agritech startups have made this ecosystem more advanced, organized, resilient to largely benefit its most important stakeholder—the Indian farmers. Innovative solutions, online marketplaces, refined supply-chain, mobile apps, drones and more investments are not just empowering the producers but making resources accessible, offering better prices, preventing wastage, maximizing profits, building scalable businesses and eliminating bottlenecks.
According to a Nasscom study, Indian farmers face post-harvest losses amounting to a whopping Rs 93,000 crore. The agritech startups here are playing a crucial role in reducing wastage and enhancing agricultural practices to ultimately benefit the farmers. The agritech solutions are designed in a manner that they are enhancing farm productivity and profitability by reducing yield loss and wastage. Numbers suggest that the world’s population is projected to reach 8.5 billion by 2030, and to meet the inevitable food demand, the agritech players are making significant contributions to achieve agricultural scalability.
The agritech startups today have accelerated large-scale tech adoption and eliminated many bottlenecks by refining the supply chain, mainly the inward supply chain with the help of technology. This greatly benefitted the producers in optimum utilisation of their produce, expanded reach of their agricultural products and increased sales by taking them to a large customer base by connecting them to online marketplaces. Additionally, agritech enabled grading of products, introduced online tracking and labelling in the supply chain and reduced leakages, damages and losses during transportation through a far more efficient supply chain.
Moreover, building scalable business with fresh produce or perishable commodities like fruits and vegetables was a big challenge and blocked companies from expanding. The agritech startups here with the help of technology-enabled warehouses and collection centres not just enabled the organisations to build scalable businesses but also resulted in delivering of the products through hyper-delivery apps to end-users in record time. Procuring from farmers wasn’t a tedious task anymore, delivery to the end-user became hassle-free and the market gained steam, benefitting all the stakeholders, majorly farmers.
The advent of agritech solutions made transactions more transparent and completely eliminated the middlemen who exploited the farmers and led to excess inventory, causing huge losses. The transparency and efficiency helped farmers to sell their products at competitive prices online and also allowed them to know the exact demand that existed in the market. This majorly benefited farmers who were not in a position to negotiate better prices for their produce. Besides easing processes, they also ensured no compromise in quality and resulted in better outcomes.
In India, nearly 86.2 percent of all Indian farmers are small and marginal farmers who still rely on conventional, unscientific methods of farming. The agritech players here not only opened new channels of capital but also improved yield through data, real-time crop monitoring, insights, digitisation, crop and soil health, weather forecasts for better strategies ultimately resulting in increased profits and lesser wastages.
Owing to the huge growth prospects, the overall agritech ecosystem witnessed a revenue growth of approximately 85 percent during FY 2019-20. A study by Bain & Company pegs this potential at US$35 billion by 2025. To ensure that farmers get their due advantage in a promising future that lies ahead, agritech will definitely play a critical role. A digital revolution in agriculture is underway and agritech startups will definitely bridge the gap between farmers and economic opportunities.
Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
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