Why Agrochemical Manufacturers Should Partner With Agritech Startups Today
India is the fourth largest producer of agrochemicals behind USA, Japan and China. The agrochemical industrial complex was one of the major contributors towards India’s transformation from a food deficient to a food surplus country during the Green Revolution.
The sector is expected to grow at 8 per cent per annum to become a $ 7.5 billion by FY19. Despite this impressive growth, it continues to face multiple bottlenecks and in an agriculture-dominated country like India, this figure should be significantly higher.
Low penetration and lack of awareness among consumers (farmers) has impacted the growth of the sector. Despite agrochemicals being used in India for several decades now, the sector has less than 50 per cent penetration, according to a media report.
Additionally, the Indian agrochemical market is highly fragmented, and intense competition between organised and unorganised manufacturers adds to the challenge.
Agrochemical manufacturers can overcome these obstacles by entering into strategic partnerships with agritech startups who have heavily invested into R&D to develop tech solutions to address the issues faced by agriculture stakeholders.
Information Services using IVRS
Agritech startups with ICT-based interactive voice response systems (IVRS) can become the ideal platform for agrochemical companies to market their products, create awareness about the best practices, and generate high-quality leads as farmers directly raise demand request during the call. This service can also help agrochemical markets penetrate into untapped territories.
FarmGuide’s IVRS can also be offered by agrochemical manufacturers as a value-added services on purchasing their product. Our software can also ensure that the individual end-user optimizes their usage of the chemicals based on their farm size, crop type, soil health and irrigation type to get the best result.
Image Processing & Data Analytics
FarmGuide can achieve the previous mentioned levels of customization because of our farm-level insights that have been generated from our image processing and data analytics lab. Such customized information will end the practice of generic products and create brand differentiation in the crowded agrochemicals industry.
Software as a Service
Agrochemical manufacturers have to also overcome the challenge of supply and suffer terrible losses due to logistics and inventory issues. Agritech startups have developed softwares that use machine-learning to optimise business functions like stock management, storage and distribution of the product to reduce waste, and self-plan the entire logistics cycle. This SaaS solutions saves the capital-heavy investments that manufacturers need to set up new plants in unmapped areas.
The current business environment is ideal for agrochemical manufacturers and agritech startups to collaborate as these innovations are new to India and their deployment would result in first user advantage for companies.
