Role of Agri-Startups in AGRICULTURAL SECTOR

What is Agri-startups?

Agri-start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model in field of agricultural sector or in its allied sectors.

With the help of developed innovation in field of Agri-technologies can be part of Agri-startups.

What is Agri-Technology or Agritech?

The use of technology in agriculture, horticulture, and aquaculture with the aim of improving yield, efficiency, and profitability. Agricultural technology can be products, services or applications derived from agriculture that improve various input/output processes.

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India is home to more than 450 startups in the agriculture technology sector, of the global total of about 3,100. -According to NASSCOM report, yearly growth of Agri tech startups in India has been at a rate of 25%.

1. AgriTech startups can address this issue with demand driven cold chains, warehouse monitoring solutions and market linkages that can significantly boost farmer income.

2. A major turning point for agricultural technology is the Industrial Revolution, which introduced agricultural machinery to mechanize the labor of agriculture, greatly increasing farm worker productivity.

3. Agricultural robots, agricultural drones and driverless tractors have found regular use on farms, while digital agriculture and precision agriculture make use of extensive data collection and computation to improve farm efficiency.

4. Surge up usage and practice of Smart farming .

APPLICATIONS OF AGRI-TECH STARTUPS: -

1. Digitization of mandis, as well as farmer producer organizations.

2. Increase crop productivity by using big data analytics.

3. Artificial Intelligence and remote sensing to improve land management, crop cycle monitoring and harvest traceability.

4. Innovations like image sensing for quality grading.

5. Solving farmers’ credit issues (providing low-cost digital loans using virtual credit cards to farmers).

ROLE OF AGRISTART UPS: -

1. AgriTech startups with the ever-increasing internet are increasing awareness among the farming communities and connecting them to a network of traders, retailers and exporters willing to buy their produce at higher prices.

2. small and marginal farmers can now secure loans from formal institutions at low-interest rates, with help of Fintech and AgriTech startups, the lending landscape of the country is changing.

3. Technological advances in supply chain platforms have also resulted in the supply of high-quality live input materials to farmers engaged in livestock rearing and aquaculture.

4. The AgriTech Startups are empowering farmers to integrate livestock rearing and aquaculture into their existing operations with micro-farm installation requiring minimum space and labor.

5. advent of AgriTech startups and digital tools, many Indian farmers are supplementing their income with farm diversification.

6. Agri-startups will flourish in India if they are associated with industry associations like APEDA, Indian Chamber of Food & Agriculture, NASSCOM, etc., especially for testing/validation of prototypes before their launch.

BY KHAS.