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India’s Agritech Sector Booms with Emerging Startups and Rising Investment

AgriTech Chemicals and Fertilizers

India’s Agritech Boom: Startups & Investments Transform Farming

Business Honor
24 November, 2024

India's agritech sector thrives with investment and innovation, but faces funding and adoption challenges.

India's agritech sector is rapidly growing and innovating, with 19 soonicorns- which are startups close to being unicorns-and 40 minicorns that use new age technologies like AI in a bid to bridge the gap in technology in agriculture, according to a new RBI paper titled Agri-Tech Startups and Innovations in Indian Agriculture. Although only one unicorn exists, India's agritech ecosystem continues to attract more investors to itself, with investments rising from $370 million in 2019 to $1.25 billion in 2021.

This paper presents essential governmental support, funding, research and development, and state-level digital infrastructure as the primary factors for the agritech startup ecosystem to accelerate. It further focuses on initiatives such as 'Digital India' and 'Make in India' that help agripreneurship develop.

These include IoT, big data analytics, AI, blockchain, drones, and biotechnology. Indian startups have begun using these emerging technologies to deal with some of the more daunting issues facing agriculture-increased yields, removal of inefficiencies, and providing new solutions for the farmers. All these would work to enhance productivity while also making farming more sustainable.

However, challenges such as low funding, fragmented land holdings, and the requirement of more modern technologies that should be adopted by the farmers make it difficult to scale the agritech startups.

India holds 8.5% of global agri-tech funding, with the largest share being led by the US at 43.2%. While global funding for agritech peaked at $10.9 billion in 2021-2022, it sharply decreased to $5.2 billion in 2023, reflecting global trends.

Despite these challenges, the agritech industry in India is one such major player in the ecosystem that continues to garner robust state support towards further growth promotion for mainstreaming of various forms of agricultural technologies.