Top 10 Best AgriTech Companies In India 2022
Agriculture has benefited from technological advancements in terms of output, efficiency, and profitability, this is known as agritech. Furthermore, technology can be used to plant more quickly, grow crops in a variety of environments, and harvest crops. Agricultural automation can include robotics, big data, artificial intelligence, or any other approach that is needed to address the industry’s issues.
My entire life has been based on the belief that Indian agriculture is self-sufficient. Before offering solutions, it is vital to ensure that one thoroughly comprehends the needs of the farmers. Agriculture has seen a lot of technological developments recently, and the term ‘agri-tech’ was coined to characterize it.
What exactly is agri-tech?
It refers to farming methods that are environmentally sound, sustainable, and profitable, and that use agri-tech to improve production, efficiency, and profitability in agriculture. Water filters, pumps, and digital services that connect buyers and sellers in rural markets are examples of the equipment. Chemical-free fertilizers, heirloom seeds, and intelligent agriculture technology are among the other options.
Top 10 Best AgriTech Companies In India 2022
Agritech businesses have witnessed a lot of innovation in India’s agriculture industry. Their main purpose is to increase the productivity of farmers by providing useful tools and products. In this post, we’ve compiled a list of the top 10 Agritech startups in India.
1. EM3 Agri Services
EM3 Agri Services was started in 2013 by Adwitiya Mal and Rohtash Mal as an Agritech firm in India. The startup’s goal is to make the process of agricultural cultivation easier by offering rental services. Land preparation, sowing and planting, harvesting, crop management, and post-harvest farm management are all services provided by this company. The startup has been given $13.3 million in funding.
2. Aibono
Aibono is a successful Agritech startup in India, founded in 2014 by Vivek Rajkumar. This company is the first in India to use artificial intelligence to collect dietary data. Several prizes have been given to their services. Farmers will be able to control planting material with the help of the firm, which will increase their earnings. A total of $3.5 million in seed money has been distributed to the company.
3. Fasal
Ananda Verma launched Fasal, an agritech firm based in India, in 2018. Farmers can plan, monitor, and analyze their farming efforts with the help of this startup’s application. The Fasal sense uses artificial intelligence to forecast the future of pests and insects. A total of $1.8 million has been raised through seed investments.
4. Agrowave
Anu Meena started the agritech business Agrowave on March 17, 2017. Farmers benefit from the startup’s network of integrated mobile pickup stations (MPS). Small and medium-sized enterprises benefit from the company’s direct connections with small and medium-sized firms in the fruits and vegetable sector.
5. Agricx
Saurabh Kumar launched Agricx, an Agritech firm in India, in October 2016. AI-enabled SaaS solutions are supplied by the startup to businesses that finance, process, transport, trade, sort, or manufacture agricultural products. The world’s first AI-enabled SaaS stack startup. The startup has been given a $500K seed investment.
6. Gold Farm
On December 1, 2012, Karthic Ravindranath and Abhilash Thirupathy started Gold Farm in India. A startup that specializes in providing farm equipment rental services to Indian farmers. It’s a mobile-based Agritech startup. Solar water pumps can also be purchased by farmers in India through the company. A $3 million seed investment round has been completed.
7. WayCool
WayCool, an Agritech firm in India, was started by Karthik Jayaraman and Sanjay Dasari in July 2015. The company’s headquarters are in Chennai. The company sells fresh foods and dairy goods in addition to processing and distributing items. Other tasks included procuring items, processing them, branding, marketing, and providing farm inputs. The business raised $66.3 million in a debt financing round. Caspian Impact Investment Advisor, Madhu Krishnaswamy, CK Ranganathan, and others are among its investors.
8. Crofarm
Crofarm is a successful Agritech startup in India, founded in May 2016 by Varun Khurana and Prashant Jain. Crofarm provides useful services to consumers and businesses in addition to assisting farms. Obtaining fresh veggies and fruits from farmers can be done in a variety of methods, whether offline or online. The startup was funded with $2.8 million from an early-stage venture capital firm.
9. NinjaCart
NinjaCart is an Indian Agritech startup founded in 2015 by Thirukumaran Nagarajan, Kartheeswaran KK, Sharath Babu Loganathan, Ashutosh Vikram, and Vasudevan Chinnathambi. Farmers can sell their crops directly to stores and restaurants through the startup, and selling directly to retailers increases farmer income. The business received $164.2 million in a corporate round of fundraising. Investors include Trifecta Capital, ZopSmart, Joe Hirao, and others.
10. AgroStar
Shardul and Sitanshu Sheth created AgroStar in 2013 to provide an online agricultural marketplace for farmers. This agritech startup can also provide farmers with real-time advise from experts on how to better manage their crops and increase their production. To date, AgroStar has raised $42 million in investment.
Why AgriTech and its future?
Agriculture is a sector that, owing to sustainable investigation, provides a variety of prospects for capital investments and agriculture to expand together. Agri-tech is intended to be a sustainable alternative to today’s chemical-intensive, western-influenced technologies. Agricultural tech start-ups, in comparison to other start-ups today, are more focused on solving genuine problems than perceived problems, which is adequate to attract quantitative investment.
If we’re talking about the future of Agri-Tech, the agricultural sector is and will likely remain uncertain. In this regard, Indian start-ups would benefit from continuing to ride the investment wave and focusing on real-world problems rather than perceptions.
Future agri-tech approaches will be more environmentally friendly than today’s chemical-intensive technologies influenced by western countries. When small-scale farmers receive the attention they require, their challenges will be addressed. Before any remedies are proposed, farmers must be consulted.
Last but not least, we must find a means to lessen the dependency of farmers on rainfall. In many ways, the irrigation system is still deficient, and more work needs to be done in this area. A new irrigation fund with a budget of Rs 20,000 crore will be established, which is a wonderful thing.
There are indicators that the agri-tech sector is going to experience some exciting developments, with more people recognizing the need for support for the agricultural sector. This wave of invention and implementation is designed to shift the focus of continuing agricultural debates away from small-scale farmers’ difficulties and minimize their dependency on government aid.
Agritech start-ups are also improving technology in market connections such as B2B and B2C marketplaces, retail, and digital agronomy platforms, so that they can give technological benefits in addition to one of their social objectives. As of today, these start-ups are capable of addressing the inherent issues of Indian agriculture from the outset, and they can now give small-scale farmers with the appropriate techniques, knowledge, and efficiency for pre-harvest and post-harvest decisions.
Advantages
Agricultural technology reforms have a lot of benefits. Organic farming and food production are becoming more popular among both household gardeners and farmers. In this case, Agritech assists with the use of compost, mulch, and organic fertilizers.
Second, farmers are growing more interested in integrated farming. They want to create new ways to make money that aren’t dependent on a single job, such as honeybee and silkworm farming. By merging agriculture with technology, farmers can explore new possibilities. People can now start soilless agriculture, such as growing crops in hydroponic systems, thanks to technological advancements.
Farms can grow more crops on less area: Farmers can plant more crops on less land. On each acre, dedicated seed, fertilizer, and timely water supply ensure optimal productivity.
Agritech Use Cases
Agricultural technologies can be applied in a variety of ways to help farmers overcome problems. Agritech employs applications and technologies to make these solutions possible. Here are some of the most important agritech applications: –
Smart Farming
Farms and fields can be made more efficient and improved by employing prior inspections and research using smart farming methods. There are numerous strategies to create a smart farm ecosystem —
-Automated irrigation- The benefits of automated and adaptive irrigation include enhanced crop output, water, and energy savings, and environmental preservation.
Weather forecasting for optimal crop planting and harvesting .
– Planting crops when the environment is conducive to their growth helps to increase yields.
Sensors, satellites, drones, and their data are utilized to make accurate decisions regarding different types of crops and plots of land in precision farming.
-Vertical farming entails the use of irrigation systems, lighting supplements, oxygen, and other gases to grow crops vertically. Because it is a simple and efficient approach, vertical farming can be utilized to produce food in small, packed locations. You can cultivate your crops in the heart of the city if you have a vertical farm on your roof or balcony.
-Hydroponics – A hydroponic system supplies the exact mineral nutrients, in precisely measured amounts, that a crop requires to develop without soil. Vertical farming can be easily accomplished using hydroponics because it does not require soil, and the crops can be protected from climate change while being produced all year.
Agricultural Challenges
Farming faces numerous issues, the most of which have a significant impact on the planet’s future. These are some of them:
- Land Management
Agriculture uses artificial fertilizers, herbicides, and insecticides, resulting in a significant decline in soil fertility. As a result, the soil degrades, becoming less fertile and pesticide and insecticide resistant, resulting in lower growth rates. Synthetic chemicals also damage water supplies in the area.
- Climate Change
Intensive agriculture entails rapidly reclaiming land from forests, diminishing forest cover, and emitting greenhouse gases, all of which contribute to climate change and temperature rise. Climate change has an impact on people, plants, and crops all around the world.
- Resource Depletion
Agricultural machinery is constructed and run with numerous different resources, such as metal for parts and petroleum for fuel. Rather than lessening environmental damage, this actually increases it.
- Increasing Carbon Footprint
In farming, by-products and waste are prevalent. Organic farming, unlike typical farming, contributes to climate change because it takes up a lot of space and is supposed to have a favorable impact on the ecology. As a result of these circumstances, farmers all over the world are compelled to either optimize or stick to old farming methods, which are also harmful to the environment.
- Bio-Diversity
In order to feed a growing population, agricultural production must increase. As a result, forests become agricultural land, and non-agricultural land becomes agricultural land. Because of the loss of biodiversity, reclamation of forest land has negative consequences for the flora and fauna of that area.
Agriculture technology, often known as Agritech, aims to create profitable and efficient farming practices that are also ecologically friendly and long-term. Agritech is a value innovation because of the unique relationship between agriculture and India. Agriculture has long been the backbone of the Indian economy, dictating the level of living for roughly 60% of the population and contributing significantly to the country’s GDP.
Agritech businesses aim to boost rural income, protect farmers’ rights, and boost economic turnover while also maintaining India’s nutritional and food security. Agritech startups in India will need regular attention, rigorous investments, and widespread awareness to achieve this. It is vital to discuss the decade of Agritech startups in order to comprehend the consequences of India’s existing agriculture system and its impact:
1. Despite the size of the Indian agriculture market, it is still lacking in key areas.
2. In comparison to other countries, India earns a low amount per hectare of crops. This is one of the country’s major worries. Poor water management and a lack of structured water resource management strategies are additional factors in India’s low agricultural productivity.
3. Inadequate sophisticated farming techniques have a negative impact on agricultural productivity. Farmers in various poor communities are unaware of and unfamiliar with current practices, resulting in lower revenues.
4. Agricultural waste is caused by a lack of storage space and a marketing route, resulting in poor exports. The agricultural lifecycle is notorious for ignoring quality control.
The absence of research and development in the business has had a severe impact on a number of farmers who live only to farm.
5. Following revenue failures, a number of farmers and their families have been impacted. Several farmers have committed suicide as a result of their hefty credit history, further undermining hope for their families.
6. The major roadblocks to Agri-tech are research and development, and technology improvements can only be adopted after thorough testing. It also necessitates a significant amount of capital, as well as funding for equipment, computers, and teaching farmers on how to utilize them. The largest difficulty facing agri-tech is a lack of knowledge, and agri-tech approaches are not widely available to rural populations working in this industry.
Conclusion
We believe that AI/ML, IoT, and related technologies can truly touch the lives of farmers and turn agriculture into a move towards sustainability if used in tandem with a two-pronged approach of adopting the latest technology and moving in a sustainable manner. With only 1% penetration of the potential market of US$24 billion, India’s agricultural technology sector is still in its infancy.
Due to increased investment, the sector’s growth has accelerated in recent years. As a result, for the Indian agritech market to prosper, stakeholders from throughout the agritech ecosystem must collaborate:
Agritech startups must demonstrate scalability and higher unit economics to gain investor support. In the agritech landscape, innovation and relationships with stakeholder organisations such as food processors, distributors, and FPOs are required for startup success.
Government: Following recently announced changes, Indian agriculture is poised to undergo a revolution. The government can help boost underfunded industries like financial services and precision agriculture and farm management by collecting local data on soil health and providing access to government research facilities.
Farming community: FPOs may help small and marginal farmers achieve digital literacy, which would speed up agritech adoption in the country. Furthermore, FPOs may form partnerships with food processing firms and institutional retailers to incentivize farmers to produce higher-quality produce and, as a result, encourage agritech adoption.
Investors: When compared to worldwide benchmarks, India’s agritech investment funding is severely underfunded. Precision agriculture and farm management are two of the most underfunded areas of the agricultural industry. Worldwide investors may contribute to India’s agritech growth storey by transferring expertise from their global success stories.
Agriculture is one of the most effective weapons against hunger and poverty, benefiting billions of people.
Farmers are the only individuals in our economy that buy things wholesale and pay for delivery both ways. If you ate today, thank a farmer.
To assist you to understand the agritech market, this article highlights the top 10 agritech startups in India.
Article Proofread & Published by Gauri Malhotra.
