Af Malhotra
As India and the UK get closer to signing the much anticipated Free Trade Agreement (FTA), it is an opportune time for both nations to focus on new areas of trade and innovation.
One opportunity is in the field of food security and sustainability. The current food crisis is probably the worst in a decade. With the consequences of climate change coinciding with trade restrictions and conflict, years of progress in the battle against hunger and poverty are being rapidly reversed.
Many countries are responding with policies that amount to food protectionism, which on a global level will only lead to further food insecurity as richer countries outcompete poorer ones in the race for scarce resources.
Tech need of the hour
There is an urgent need to make structural changes to global food systems, embrace technology innovation geared to boost food sustainability, transform agricultural practices that leverage real-time data from devices, sensors, robots and software to increase efficiency in the end-to-end food system – from production, processing, distribution to consumption. This is where New India can play a globally significant role, and thrive as an exporter of agricultural technology, innovation, education, talent and R&D.
New India is about transforming the nation using digital technologies. The startup economy is the core driver of this transformation. There are more than 72 thousand registered startups in India which have created over 7.6 million jobs in the past six years.
India’s global appeal is also on the rise, as tech investors worldwide continue pouring funds into India-born tech firms. This has made way for new technology sectors to emerge, agri-tech being the most promising and set to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of close to 50 per cent, addressing a $34 billion market by 2027.
Agriculture + technology
The economic case for India to dominate as an exporter of technology is clear and unchallenged. Marrying agriculture to technology makes perfect sense since both are large contributors to India’s GDP and employ millions of people. Agriculture in India is highly fragmented, with low crop yields due to small sizes of farms. There are many intermediaries which limit scale and scope to modernise retailers, the quality of data on crop yield, sales and climate is ad hoc and informal, and credit flow and financing options are limited.
Agri-tech is therefore the perfect answer and it is already happening in a big way. Over $3 billion has been invested in agritech startups in India, and all major global and local investment firms are involved, such as Sequoia Capital, Softbank, TigerGlobal and Fidelity, to name a few. In excess of 1,500 agri-tech startups have raised capital, and 17 of them have generated over $100 million in gross merchandise value (similar to gross revenue), with 15 million farmers having experienced the benefits of agri-tech innovation.
Pankaj Naik, Executive Director, and Co-head, Digital and Technology Investment Banking, Avendus Capital, sums it up wonderfully. He says, “Agriculture contributes $530 billion to India’s GDP, but sees less than 1 per cent of technology penetration. The unique innovations in production, supply-chain, market linkage, quality assessment, and digital traceability have the potential to become ‘from India to the world solutions’.”
Productive startups
There are numerous examples of success and bright spots that are leading the way for others to follow. One such startup, Fala Tech – founded by Padmaraj Shett and Ravi Hotkar – incubated in Hubballi, near Bangalore, by the Deshpande Startups Foundation – is using robots in micro-farming environments to increase crop output efficiency by integrating advanced technologies including software and IoT sensors.
Other successes include the likes of Agrim, a marketplace with input retailers to 2,500+ producers providing end-toend farm mechanisation services on payper-use basis, Or, Tartan Sense, reducing use of pesticides by 40 per cent and time utilised for weeding by 85 per cent with AI-powered robots. There is BigHaat, which offers farmers technical advisory and automated disease detection for preharvest challenges.
The future is clearly bright for agritech in India. A sector that is set to produce 8-10 unicorns, 2-3 IPOs, growing at 50 per cent CAGR, can positively impact over 40 million farmers, and help them increase their income by 100 per cent – inside of next five years. This is nothing short of incredible!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Af Malhotra is a tech founder, investor and philanthropist based in London. He has held leadership positions in global companies including Amstrad, Fujitsu and Gartner. Af is a regular contributor in the media – having been featured as a ‘Technology Entrepreneur and Visionary’, on the BBC News, CNBC Live, HuffPost, Financial Express Magazine, The Times, Raconteur, Bloomberg, International Finance Magazine and the Entrepreneur Magazine. He did his graduation and post-graduation from Goldsmiths College, University of London (Anthropology), Kingston Business School (MA in Business),Harvard Business School (Executive Education). He is also a guest lecturer at London Business School (LBS) and Queen Mary’s, University of London.
