Agritech Industry in India
In India agriculture has embarked on a drive of modernization that is backed up by regular headwinds and they have also paved the way for a thriving agricultural technology which is the Agri-tech segment. The sector is set to be valued at roughly 370 billion USD, and with India’s 1 billion-plus population, it employs over 40% of them in this field. There is also the fact that this sector is short on several fronts such as productivity or efficiency and infrastructure. It is also said that a much-needed overhaul might be on its way.
Agriculture startups in India
Sfarms India
The company was founded by Kamesh Mupparaju and Linus Lindgren in the year 2018. It is an online web application that has two core functions and they are listing and fraction trading. Both of these functions work together which helps create a great synergy.
On this platform, the buyers can find and search agricultural lands for lease or sale and they can also list or post for the sellers. Not only this but the company also has a main USP which agrees with the seller to issue fractions with the help of digital and contract against their lands.
It is agricultural and has been provided with a digital contract and divided into 2,000 fractions for every single acre. This will help them enable medium to small income groups to get hold of lands feasibly. Once on the fraction of land,, they cancel it directly on the trading platform. technology has made a core impact on the company’s business operations.
KhetiGaadi
KhetiGaadi was founded by Pravin Shinde and Vishnu Das in the year 2016. This is the world’s first platform where a person can buy or sell or even rent and compare and also review tractors and farm machinery with just a click. The main aim of the company was to promote farm mechanization and usage of technology as well as the high tech products in agriculture to bring optimisation to the yield with fewer man-hours. The company is built on a Hi-Tech angular technology and it has been built as safe as any online banking portal.
To make the platform user friendly for the farmers, the company has also made the app available in more than 10 languages. The website can be viewed in three different languages – English, Hindi and Marathi. Not just that but it is also compatible with iOS as well as Android. the startup is looking to raise a series of funding and is also expecting to double the GMV to 100 crores INR by the end of 2021.
Farm2fam
This company is based in Mumbai which was founded by Keya Salot in 2019. The company produces microgreens that are free from pesticides or herbicides and chemicals to deliver them straight to the customers’ doorstep. The primary aim is to create awareness about the capacity of the human body to heal itself with the help of natural nutrition.
Not only that but they also have a huge interest in combining both the use of technology as well as traditional Indian agricultural methods to provide a better nutritional product to be grown. Keya Salot is a law graduate and she worked with reputed law firms before commencing this company. The company is planning to partner up with brands such as Pizza express, bay route and white charcoal. the company has targeted 300 + consumers per month in the months to come.
Crofarm
Crofarm is a website that was founded in the year 2016 by Prashant Jain and Varun Khurana. The company is f2b which is a farm to the business venture. The platform has over 10,000 farmers on the network currently and they recently partnered up with the Reliance retail and big basket as well as Grofers and Big Bazaar. Metro foods and Jubilant FoodWorks also came into the picture recently. they acquire the revenue on a a commission basis.
The day starts with 5% of the price in case of fewer perishables like onions and potatoes. Then they start with 15% of the price for green vegetables and 20 to 25% in the case of fruits and vegetables. they try to prove that you are the products that have a long-lasting shelf life through the national sourcing zones and the other products from regional sources in zones. they have successfully raised 1.5 million dollars in seed funding.
Boheco
Boheco is also known as the Bombay Hemp Company. It is based out of Mumbai and was founded in the year 2013. The company was founded to provide research and promote industrial hemp and its benefits. Apart from all this, they have operations based on cultivation and harvesting processes in manufacturing, trading, wholesaling, retailing, innovating, creating a market for promoting industrial hemp in India both across the country and all around the world.
Boheco employs a public-private partnership, which includes contractual farming and processing of the subsidiaries. The collaborative research models were built with an aim to help the industrial hemp ecosystem place its roots firmly into India and gain the much needed momentum it needs. The company has the primary objective of reinventing the future of agriculture with hemp as the main lens in India. the startup is also currently in progress to harness the power of agriculture by advocating industrial hemp and its benefits to society.
Ecozen Solution
Ecozen is a tech company based in Pune; It was founded by Devendra Gupta in the year 2010. The main aim of the company is to develop all the technology-enabled products which help strengthen the farm to fork value chain of the perishable goods and they also look out for renewable energy and sustainable development. The company has two products under its belt – one of them is a device that acts as a portable folding room that maintains a low temperature and is run on solar power.
The other one is a pump controller for irrigation uses which can also be run with the help of solar power. Ecozen has stated that more than 20,000 farmers are using their products. the company is planning in the future to reach out to new areas of irrigation sales and launch new chin products.
Fresh VnF
Fresh VnF was founded by Atul Kumar, Vikas Dosala, Sumit Rai, and Aashish Krishnatre in the year 2018. The company is based out of Mumbai and uses machine learning to provide optimisation for farm to fork supply chains by connecting the farmers with hotels as well as restaurants and cafes.
It is a very interesting company and has recently raised 2 million USD through a funding round led by Equanimity Ventures. They have accomplished delivering more than 15 tonnes of fresh produce every single day to over 300 clients. The company has its aim to provide fresh farm produce to the customer within 16 hours of harvesting.
How does Ninjacart Make Money?
Bonus points to Ninjacart because it is just an amazing company that we’re all excited about. Ninjacart was founded in the year 2015 in Bangalore, India. Their last funding round happened in October 2020, in which NinjaCart raised 49.7 million dollars with a valuation of 503 million USD; their total funding raised till date is 213 million USD. The revenues stood at 59.1 million USD as of December 2019. That kind of sums up how big Ninjacart is, and how rapidly it is growing.
The company started handling only summer orders everyday, but has quickly expanded nd now the daily volume has skyrocketed close to 1400 vegetables and fruits directly from the farm – provided to the retailers in less than 12 hours and they can be served to around 17000 retailers across all the seven major cities of India. They also provide a greater accuracy in terms of delivery of the fresh produce.
Closing Thoughts
Agritech is one of the fastest and emerging industries in the country right now. There are more entrepreneurial companies setting themselves up in this field every single day than any other field, almost everyone is trying to grab the opportunity that comes their way to transform the sector. The government policies are also looking after the startups by giving them so that they can find investors more easily. With the help of all this and more, you can rest assured that the farmers of our country can look forward to better price realisation, more benefits, and an overall development of the food industry
