How start-ups are trying to build efficient agri supply chain platforms

As agriculture looks at adopting technology, entrepreneurs and investors flock to address the space

In a country where more than half of the population is dependent on agriculture for its livelihood, a technology revolution in this space has been long overdue, and thankfully it is beginning to take shape now.

India is seeing the rise of a slew of start-ups that are streamlining various facets of agriculture process, with the government and the private sector laying a stern emphasis on harnessing technology and the power of the Internet. While all this time the focus had been on improving farm productivity, a whole lot of start-ups in the recent days are trying to address the most pressing issue that affects agriculture – wastage – by building more efficient supply chain platforms. 

Take for example, NinjaCart, a Bengaluru-based start-up that helps delivering agri produce from farms to kirana stores in less than 12 hours. The three-year-old company manages the supply of around 300 tons of vegetables and fruits to over 4,000 vendors across Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, on a daily basis. Likewise, digital commerce firms like Big Basket and Grofers to smaller ones like Agro Star and FarmTaaza are also doing considerable work in tuning the farm-to-fork supply chain.

Apart from the food crop segment, start-ups are also fixing supply in categories like milk and daily products (Milkbasket), raw meat (Licious and Zappfresh), and cash crops especially tea (Vahdam Teas and Teabox). Platforms like BigHaat and Farmguru that have come up, supply good quality agri inputs like seeds and fertilisers across India.

This has not only given the farmers a new avenue to sell their produce, as an alternate to local mandis, but has introduced them (at least the more affluent ones) to the best practices with the use of technology and data science.

“The disruption is happening as there is a lot more use of technology and data. Farm-to-fork is already happening and now there is e-commerce and tech in agri distribution,” said Rema Subramanian, the founding partner at impact fund, Ankur Capital. The fund has invested in a company called CropIn that gives farmers a complete tech stack for farm management for things like predictive yield, resources and produce management, CRM and sales.

Albeit at a slow pace, innovation is also starting to reach farm lands as well. A whole array of internet of things (IoT) gadgets are available in the market today that track everything from crop health to the water level in reservoirs, keeping the farmer better informed about the state of the crop while sitting at home.

Agricx Lab, a start-up incubated at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, has developed a technology which can check the quality of vegetables using the camera on a smartphone. Similarly, EM3 Agri Services, which operates under the brand Samadhan, offers ground-levelling machines, deep-ploughing equipment and power harrows along with operators. The company currently operates in farm belts in Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Rajasthan.

As entrepreneurs take to solving legacy challenges marring agriculture, investors too are also opening up to the sector. Data shows, investments in agri-tech ventures have risen consistently over the last three years. From $24.8 million invested across 35 deals in calendar year 2016, investment into this space in the ongoing year to date stands at $87.6 million, according to Tracxn Labs, a corporate data firm.

“Agri-tech is getting hotter and hotter with the potential to becoming a multi-billion sector, even bigger than e-commerce,” said Thirukumaran Nagarajan, CEO of NinjaCart. “But it is still at a nascent stage. Investors know that and want to get in. A lot of conglomerates are also eyeing this space.”

Reports also suggest that Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal, who recently exited his venture making almost a billion dollars in payback, is also keen on investing in agri-tech, through a new fund that he is currently in the process of setting up.

Experts also say that increasing penetration of smartphones with access to the Internet by farmers is also changing the whole approach to the technology. Even though it is estimated that a meagre 5-10 per cent of the farming households may have access to the Internet, it opens them to apps such as Iffco Kisan App, FarmBee, and AgriApp, which pack content on agricultural best practices and weather forecast among others.