For the past few years, the agriculture space, most underserved with innovation and technology, is witnessing a 25 percent growth of agritech startups year-on-year, focussing on clearing age-old bottlenecks by developing better market linkages, improving productivity and yield, and building better farm infrastructure to the 150 million farmer community.
According to industry body FICCI ( Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry), India is home to 450 agritech startups and has received venture capital funding of $545 million since 2014.
The influx of startups in agritech can be attributed to India’s questionable food security as the traditional methods of farming are inadequate to feed India’s growing population that requires technology interference.
Realising the potential in the agritech space, the Indian agritech venture capital firm Omnivore is going to launch a US$150 million fund to aid entrepreneurs and startups focussed on everything from predictive crop insights to AI-powered precision farming. This funding launch is the third since Omnivore’s inception in 2010.
What is Omnivore?
In 2010, where online shopping startups were booming in India, the agriculture space contributing 16 percent to GDP was yet mired in its traditional farming practices.
Startups in the agritech do come up with a promising start or idea but meet with a sad fate early due to lack of monetary support as the general VCs are reluctant to support them.
This led Mark Kahn along with Jinesh Shah to form Omnivore in 2010 to become India’s first agritech-focussed venture capitalist company.
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According to industry body FICCI ( Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry), India is home to 450 agritech startups and has received venture capital funding of $545 million since 2014.
How will this Funding Benefit Agritech Startups and farmers?
With the increasing population and climatic conditions turning erratic owing to rising industrial pollution, India in a few years might face the dire consequences of food security. This signals the need for large-scale technology intervention to resolve various pre/post-harvest agri-chain woes, boosting healthy production and revenue, and therefore it will be a major driver for startups to plunge into this space.
This funding launch from Omnivore will help agritech startups to build more full-stack models and internet-led services spanning the supply chain from agricultural inputs to finance to market access using technologies of SaaS, IoT, and AI.
The advanced agriculture mechanisms from agritech startups will help local farming be profitable since more than one-crore farmers use services and products built from Omnivore-funded startups.
Agritech Startups Funded to Date by Omnivore
Omnivore, since 2011, has funded 30 agritech startups that are touching the lives of more than one crore farmers and manages a capital of Rs 950 crores.
It has funded startups belonging to four subsectors, some of them are listed below:
- Precision Agriculture and Post Harvest: Dehaat, AgNext, Intello Labs, Fasal, Tartan Sense, Arya, Pixxel
- B2B Market agriplaces: ReshaMandi, Aquaconnect, Bijak
- Direct Farm-to-Consumer brands: Doodhwala, Clover, Stellaps technology
- Rural Insurtech: GramCover
Insights for the agritech startups from Omnivore’s funding Boost
- Increasing the profitability of farmers by increasing yield by strengthening tech capabilities monitoring crop growth, climate and disease detection.
- Reducing farming input costs and costs of finance
- Building income resilience of farmers by boosting rural insurtech startups that will help a farmer get better credit and insurance.
- Developing a better marketplace eliminating the intermediaries to help farmers sell produce at appropriate prices.
