Rise of India's agritech defies funding winter

The agritech sector in India is poised for accelerated growth owing to the combined effort of enterprising start-ups, private investors and government initiatives

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 Budget announcement on an agritech fund by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is the latest endorsement. 

An Agriculture Accelerator Fund will 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 her Budget Speech in Parliament last week.

While the government has not specified the size of the fund yet, global investors have already been active in the agritech space. Avendus Capital, an investment banking firm, says in a report that agritech start-ups will grow at a compound annual growth rate of close to 50 per cent 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, a provider of data and analysis, has reported that start-ups in agritech raised close to $300 million in 2022, more than double 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; and geo-mapping of farms using satellite imagery to embedded sensors to monitor soil quality.

Technology-led weather advisory and warning services are being led by the government. India will be covered by the Doppler Weather Radar Network (DWR) by 2025 to predict extreme weather events more accurately. DWR has the ability to detect air motion, wind speed, rain, temperature, thunderstorms, hail, squalls, lightning, cyclones and cloud movements. Rapid analysis of data using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning can bring high-quality insights and alerts for farmers.

AI is becoming a key tool for weather mapping and climate-change predictions. These are critical for farm management and food security. NASA has announced a collaboration to use IBM’s AI technology to discover new insights in NASA’s trove of Earth and geospatial science data. By analysing 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 data and information for the agri sector. 

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

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. 

The agritech sector in India is well-poised for accelerated growth, with the combined effort of enterprising start-ups, private investors and government initiatives.