Rise of Agritech in India

The green shoots of technology are growing into strong saplings in the farm sector.

Global funds, domestic investors and even the government have placed high bets on the agritech sector. The latest announcement on an agritech fund by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is the latest endorsement.

An Agriculture Accelerator Fund would be set up by the government to support agri start-ups in rural India. “The Fund will aim at bringing innovative and affordable solutions for challenges faced by farmers. It will also bring in modern technologies to transform agricultural practices, increase productivity and profitability,” Sitharaman said in Budget Speech in the Parliament.

While the government has not specified the size of the fund yet, global investors have already been active in the agritech space.  Investment banking firm Avendus Capital says in a report that agritech start-ups will grow at a compound annual growth rate of close to 50 percent and address a $34 billion market by 2027. The report says that India will see the emergence of about 10 agritech unicorns within five years.

Other estimates endorse this view. Venture Intelligence has reported that startups in agritech raised close to $300 million in 2022, more than double of the previous year. Agritech includes a range of options for the sector. From blockchain in food supply to drones for farmers. From temperature controlled storage to cold-chain logistics. From geo-mapping of farms using satellite imagery to embedded sensors to monitor soil quality.

Technology led weather advisory and warning services is being led by the government. India will be covered by Doppler Weather Radar Network (DWR) by 2025 to predict extreme weather events more accurately. DWR has the ability to detect air motion, wind, speed of wind, rains, temperature, thunderstorms, hail, squalls, lightning, cyclones and cloud movements. Rapid analysis of data using AI and ML can bring high quality insights and alerts for farmers. AI is becoming a key tool for weather mapping and climate change predictions. These critical for farm management and food security. NASA has announced a collaboration to use IBM's artificial intelligence (AI) technology to discover new insights in NASA's trove of Earth and geospatial science data. By analyzing petabytes of satellite data to identify changes in the geographic footprint of phenomena such as natural disasters, cyclical crop yields, and wildlife habitats, this model will help researchers provide critical analysis of the planet's environmental systems, IBM says. NASA has an India footprint too.  NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar – an Earth science satellite NISAR being jointly built by NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will contribute to data and information for agri sector.

India has also opened up geo-spatial mapping for private players for generating relevant data for farms and weather mapping. The Geo-portal initiative by Indian Council of Agri Research make geo-spatial data related to agriculture available to all the stakeholders. This portal  offers all geo-referenced data collected by ICAR institutions on climate, soil, cropping systems, land-use pattern etc. 

ISRO is planning to launch satellites only to support agritech in India according to its chairman S Somanath. “The yield of a crop doesn’t happen in a week; it happens over a few months. So you need to keep an eye on things. Today, we don’t have enough satellites. So you need to put up more satellites with a high ability to come back,” Somanath says. The satellites will be managed by the Ministry of Agriculture with support from ISRO.

Agritech sector in India is well-poised for accelerated growth with combined effort from enterprising start-ups, private investors and government initiatives.  

+++

This appeared in Business Standard on February 11, 2023.