More than 450 startups in the Indian agritech sector- NASSCOM report

NEW DELHI: The National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) today unveiled its findings for India's agritech sector in its report titled, "Agritech in India – Emerging Trends in 2019”. The emergence of B2B startups as key revenue generating segment; maturing agritech stakeholder ecosystem; evolving public private partnerships; sustained growth for agritech startups in India and emerging business opportunities are some of the important findings being showcased in the report.

Growing at the rate of 25% year on year, India currently hosts more than 450 startups in the agritech sector. Over the recent years, the agritech sector has witnessed some of the global and sector-focused funds directly investing in agritech startups. According to the report, as of June 2019, the sector has received more than $248 million funding, a growth of 300% as compared to the previous year. With the recent rise in funding, 48% agritech CEOs, as per the NASSCOM Agritech CEO survey, believe to have the next agritech unicorn in coming 3 years.

Debjani Ghosh, President NASSCOM, said in a statement, “India's agriculture sector is advancing steadily towards its digital transformation and the startup ecosystem is playing a critical role here, bringing innovation and disruption in much-needed areas. The findings of the report are a testimony to the potential of the Agritech industry and the opportunities that India presents in the agriculture and farming landscape."

With more and more local farmers accepting the innovative startup solutions, there has been a considerable shift witnessed from B2C to B2B startups. Corporates and investors are playing a vital role in supporting this with over $200 mn investment in B2B startups in the past 18 months, making it as a key revenue generating segments in the overall agritech sector. This has enabled creating better access to market, faster technology adoption and bring domain specific product development support to the industry. Indian companies are increasingly looking at global markets to expand with focus on regions like South East Asia, Europe, Africa and South America. According to the report, in the last 5 years, more than 5 global agritech companies have ventured in India, as compared to more than 25 Indian agritech companies with global presence.

New emerging areas like market linkage, digital agriculture, better access to inputs, FaaS and financing are attracting large traction. These technology adoptions are enabling numerous agritech startups to bring forth farming-related advanced technological mechanisms to help local farming become a sustainable and profit-yielding enterprise.

With public private partnerships and government support, several Indian states have established progressive agritech policies. However, certain measures such as setting up of catalytic or micro funds (ranging $2 to 14 million ) to spur innovation, offer support in terms of incubation, acceleration, and catalytic funding, opening of incubation centres, curriculum changes in agriculture universities, building of a transparent data sharing policy, and engaging with startups in larger projects, needs to be implemented by state governments to further enhance the use of futuristic technologies and support the growing agritech sector in the country.