Indian agritech startups have received 300 percent more funding in the first six months of 2019 than the total funding received in 2018.
Agritech companies raised $248 million until June 2019 as compared with $73 million in 2018, according to NASSCOM.
New areas in the agritech sector such as market linkage, digital agriculture, better access to inputs, farming as a service (FaaS) and financing are attracting more and more stakeholders to connect with this new trend in agriculture.
Indian agritech companies are also focussing on South East Asia, Europe, Africa and South America.
NinjaCart remained the top-funded Indian startup with funding of $89 million received in 2019.
Samunnati Financial Intermediation, AgroStar, WayCool and Jumbotail remained the other startups with the highest funding till June.
Tiger, Accel, BII, omnivore and Nuveen remained the top 5 investors till June 2019.
Every 9th agritech startup in the world is from India. There are 450 agritech startups in India, which are growing at 25 per cent annually, as compared to 3,103 global agritech startups.
Maharashtra has launched Agri – Tech scheme for digitally tracking agriculture management. Karnataka has set up an Agritech fund of $2.5 million with an aim to target at least 21 startups.
NITI Aayog has started a pilot project on precision agriculture using AI in 10 districts from seven states.
Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra have launched an agri open data portal to promote technology as an important tool in agriculture.
