Startup Watchlist: 12 Indian Agritech Startups To Watch Out For In 2018

This article is part of Inc42’s Startup Watchlist annual series where we list the top startups to watch for 2018 from industries like Agritech, Logistics, Blockchain etc. Explore all the stories from ‘Startup Watchlist’ series here.

“Farming is a profession of hope.” And India holds the record for the second-largest agricultural land in the world, with around 60% rural Indian households making their living from agriculture.

This not only speaks about millions of hopes associated with agriculture but also points out to the huge scope for agritech startups in the country to make those hopes of Indian farmers come true.

Likewise, the central and state governments are proactively pursuing policies to improve farmers’ lives in India. In fact, PM Modi’s government has an aim to double the average farmer’s income by 2022. No wonder, agritech became the new buzz word in the Indian startup ecosystem in 2017 and a hot topic for discussion in most of the startup conferences and events in India.

As per Inc42 Datalabs, the size of agriculture and allied activities in the country underwent a near100% growth between FY14 and FY15. Agricultural exports increased from $24.7 Bn in 2011–12 to $32.08 Bn in 2015–16; a CAGR of more than 6.75%.

But a drop in landholdings (average 1.4 hectares), small and fragmented land holdings, a decreasing agricultural land versus a growing population, decreasing groundwater levels, poor quality of seeds, and lack of mechanisation are some of the challenges for the growth of agriculture in India.

And that’s not enough, an absence of an organised marketing structure for produce, malpractices in the existing unorganised agricultural markets, inadequate facilities for transportation and storage, scarcity of credit, and limited access to superior technology are some of the many afflictions which obstruct the Indian agricultural sector.

Thus comes a massive opportunity for agritech startups in India.

Opportunities lie in areas like how to increase crop production, improving the nutritional value of the crops, reduction in input prices for farmers, improving the overall process-driven supply chain, and reducing wastage in the distribution system, among others.

Agritech startups are also leveraging technology in the area of market linkages such as retail, B2C and B2B marketplaces and digital agronomy startups. They are now able to address input challenges of agriculture in India from the very beginning.

The agritech startups are able to provide correct information, techniques, and efficiencies to farmers both for pre-harvest applications and post-harvest use cases. Accenture estimates the digital agriculture services market to hit $4.55 Bn by 2020, thus pointing out to the ample scope of growth for agritech startups in the country.

How Did Agritech Fare In India In 2017

Within the last two years, as agriculture has come back into the public mindset, there has been an increased interest in investing in this sector.

As per Inc42 DataLabs, around $36 Mn was invested in 15 startups in the space in 2017. Out of these, Pune-based agritech startup AgroStar raised the highest funding of $10 Mn Series B funding led by Accel India in March this year. Mirroring Agrostar in its funding amount was Noida-based EM3 Agri Services which offers pay-per-use farm services for every step of the cultivation process and raised $10 Mn in a Series B funding round led by Global Innovation Fund (GIF) in August.

Following closely was Bengaluru-based B2B agritech startup, Farm Taaza, that raised $8 Mn Series A funding in a round led by Epsilon Venture Partners in October.

As we close the year and the agritech rage continues unabated, with investors such as Omnivore Partners, Future Venture Capital Company Ltd. (FVCCL) and IDG Venture among others continuing to pour money in the sector, here’s our pick of 12 agritech startups to watch out for in 2018.

A List Of Indian AgriTech Startups To Watch Out For In 2018

Crofarm

Founded in May 2016 by Prashant Jain and Varun Khurana, Crofarm is an F2B (Farm to Business) venture. According to the website, it has over 10,000 farmers in its network and has partnered with Reliance Retail, Grofers, Big Basket, Jubilant Foodworks, Big Bazar and Metro Foods.

Crofarm generates revenue through commission, starting from nearly 5% of the price in case of less perishables like potato and onions. It makes a commission of around 15% of the price of green vegetables, and 20–25% in case of fruits and exotics.

The company procures products that have a longer shelf life from national sourcing zones and other products from regional sourcing zones.

In August this year, the agritech startup secured about $783K from a consortium of investors, including US-based Factor[E] Ventures; Rajan Anandan, VP of Google Southeast Asia and India and Jitendra Gupta, MD of PayU India. Prior to that in August 2016, it raised $1.5 Mn in seed funding from Mukul Singhal and Rohit Jain, former Principals at SAIF Partners.

When it comes to competition, the agritech startups that are in the same space include — Ninjacart, MeraGrocer, Freshfalsabzi.com and GrocerMax.

The Farm-to-Business, Crofarm attacks one of the biggest inefficiency in agriculture wastage during distribution and selling of farm produce. By building a digitised agri-supply chain for fruits and vegetables that is efficient and has zero wastage, it increases the incomes of both farmers and neighbourhood retailers.

Farmers using the Crofarm platform reportedly earn 25% more than what they would if they sold the produce to mandis (markets).

No wonder, it claims to have served more than 10,000 farmers from Delhi-NCR, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh and is currently servicing over 100 small and medium-sized retailers through its distribution centres.

With clients such as Reliance Retail, Grofers, Big Basket, etc., Crofarm is one agritech startup that is addressing a key problem in agriculture by efficient utilisation of technology.

Aarav Unmanned Systems

An unmanned aerial vehicle startup incubated at IIT Kanpur with a team of designers, artists, developers, and engineers from IIT Kanpur, IIT Bombay, IISc Bangalore & IIST, Aarav Unmanned Systems aims to build the future of drones and their applications in the enterprise space.

The startup’s drones provide high-value engineering solutions to enterprises across GIS (geographic information system) surveying/mapping, industrial inspection and precision agriculture. Thus it holds the potential for making precision agriculture scalable in the country which is far behind in employing technology.

By providing accurate 3D representations of the terrain surface, it can transform and change the way decisions are made in agriculture through its solutions to optimise irrigation, fertilisation, pesticide distribution and early failure warnings.

In February 2016, the agritech startup raised an undisclosed amount in Seed funding from StartupXseed Ventures, The Phoenix Fund, and other investors.

CropIn

CropIn integrates the agricultural sector with Information and Communication Technology (ICT) by putting a network of ERP and BI (Business Intelligence) across rural India. By doing so, the agritech startup collaborates with the different value chain participants along the supply chain to monitor farm produce status closely.

The agritech startup provides farm businesses a farm management software and mobile app, which enables them to do connected and data-driven farming.

In September this year, the Bengaluru-based agritech startup raised anundisclosed amount of Pre-Series A funding from Singapore-based Beenext, Ankur Capital and Invested Development. With this round of funding the total funds raised by the startup has increased to about $4 Mn. Last year, the startup had raised $2 Mn from Denmark based Sophia Investment.

CropIn allows farm businesses to take advantage of real-time data and insight from farms (an accurate view of their operation throughout the growing season) and to improve financial, operational, and agronomy aspects. The company harnesses cutting-edge technologies — Big Data analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Geo-tagging & Satellite monitoring to revolutionise the agri-ecosystem.

Closely competing with Aibono, CropIn is currently present in 12 countries with a customer base of 120 clients and enriching the lives of 500,000 + farmers. The startup claims to have digitised about 2.1 Mn acres of land.

By leveraging technology to facilitate data-driven farming and expand its presence in Southeast Asia and African countries, CropIn sits at the helm of startups which could effectively bring the benefits of SaaS to agriculture.

Read the full list of Agritech startups to watch out for in 2018 →