Farming as a service (FAAS) – selling equipments by connecting the supplier and the consumer at

affordable price

Eg: Trringo – Mahindra and Mahindra ltd

Farm to Mill

Farm to fork

Farm to warehouse model

Agribolo aims to break through the current and established agricultural trend, which is
usually controlled by moneylenders and middlemen. According to Balaji, to overcome the
farmers' crippling debt and consistent crop failures, a partnership and co-ownership model
must be adopted in the agricultural sector.

Farmers and agritech startups in India have evolved rapidly over the past few years
due to digital penetration and funding, majorly driving the growth in this sector

Indian agritech startups have received 300 per cent more funding in the first six months of
2019 than the total funding received in 2018. Agritech companies raised $ 248 million until
June 2019, which was only $ 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.

NinjaCart remained the top-funded Indian startup with funding of $ 89 mn received in 2019.

 Employment rationalisation — Even with a larger section of the population

engaged in agriculture, the sector is not the largest contributor in the GDP.
Solutions that enable farm automation and aggregation can rationalise and
gainfully redistribute the workforce.
 Processing and exports — India ranks among the top 5 countries in food
processing. By 2024, the sector is estimated to employ 90 lakh people.
Streamlining and traceability can improve farmer income and exports. 
 Stakeholder empowerment — Mandis and food processing organisations
need digitization to bring more transparency into transactions. Data and market
connect can empower each stakeholder. 
 Streamlining supply chain — Post-harvest loss in India amounts to $ 13
billion, according to NASSCOM. Demand-driven cold chains, warehouse
monitoring solutions and market linkage can significantly decrease such losses
and boost farmer incomes.
 Resource maximisation — 80 per cent of India’s freshwater is used in
agriculture. Reduction in the usage of water and pesticides is a significant
business opportunity.
  Digital Infrastructure — The lack of data and insights at ground and farmer
level has restricted the direct benefit transfer schemes to do much good to the
farmers. Laying the digital work, solutions that build a layer of data can transform
DBT schemes, insurance and loan disbursal.
Every 9th agritech startup in the world is from India. Compared to 3,103 global
agritech startups, there are 450 agritech startups operating in India, which are
growing at 25 per cent annually. The government has also started to show interest in
the field of agritech. Maharashtra launched ‘Agri – Tech’ scheme for digitally tracking
agriculture management, Karnataka 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 and Telangana, Tamil Nadu,
Maharashtra have launched an agri open data portal to promote technology as an
important tool in agriculture.

Given that agriculture accounts for nearly 60% of aggregate employment in India, there’s a fair degree of concern
over what will happen in the future, especially post this life-threatening disease

It is important to note that despite the lockdown and the supply-chain impacted nationwide, the government is
working overtime to ensure easy availability of vegetables, fruits, dairy and other essentials. Even in such a
crisis, agriculture took centre-stage. And why is that? Because ‘food’ can never go out of business. After all it is a
basic necessity for survival.

However, we have witnessed that agriculture cannot survive solely on traditional methods and desperately needs
large-scale technology intervention to resolve various pre/post-harvest agri-chain woes, which will in turn boost
healthy production and revenue.

Given that the food economy impacts human population, there’s huge scope for building a seamless ecosystem
in the agri-technology space.

2020 will no doubt be a year full of challenges, with various issues to resolve. However, with greater investor
interest and government partnerships, agri-tech companies can surely address immediate problems that threaten
the agriculture space.

Fundamental issues like poor soil quality, water shortage, low quality seeds, climate change, lack of market
access, inadequate storage facilities, ill-equipped warehouses, malpractices and poor credit facility has crippled
the agriculture sector. Only agri-tech companies can fill this gap quickly with the help of high-end technology like
GIS, Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, remote sensing, data analytics and various Internet of Thing (IoT) devices.

This is because 86% of India’s farmers are small and marginal as per Agriculture Census 2015-16.

The agronomic intelligence can help enhance micro-financing and credit facilities for farmers and create faster
access to traceability certification, which is beneficial while exporting to the overseas market. Data analytics will
also help provide accurate inputs and discourage sale of spurious seeds and crop care products to farmers. In
order to become sustainable, market linkages and networks are an essential part of any agribusiness, which is
the focus of enterprises.
Concentrated efforts are also being made to reduce dependency on intermediaries involved in the value chain
which eats into the farmer’s profit.

Agritech firms are equipped to provide viable farming solutions and the activity in this industry will multiply
manifold post the lockdown. These enterprises will create positive impact and will lead India's journey towards
overall digital agriculture transformation.

Advanced mechanisms can help local farming be profitable enterprises.

Hence emphasis should be on innovation, data-sharing, easy access to working capital, infrastructure and enable
real-time information access to farmers across the country. Quality, safety, traceability and sustainability of food
produce will be a priority for agri-economy stakeholders.

Going forward, we can look at creating new collaborative, neutral platforms for sharing data and enable a culture
of transparency as well as mutual accountability across global networks. This also means empowering
consumers and stakeholders with accurate information.

The global crisis has brought all of us together like never before. Given the adversity, and the crying need for
urgent and smart solutions, we are set to see the best minds at work to propel innovation. The dynamics of
agriculture is going through a metamorphosis and the agri-tech industry is bound to change the way business of
agriculture will be conducted. And that could well bring about another green revolution like transformation in india
Today I am going to tell a story of rebranding. But it is not about rebranding of a product or
a company or a brand. It is about rebranding of a sector. The sector which we know from our
childhood and it is a part of our life and its origin dates back to indus valley civilization. Yes
you guessed it right. We are going to look into agriculture sector concentrated more on
agritech and its’ immense growth in recent times. India ranks among the top 5 countries in
food processing. This is the sector which contributes more to our country’s GDP and also in
employment. In precise it contributes 17-18% In GDP and around 60% of aggregate
employment in India. As we can see even with a larger section of the population engaged in
agriculture, the sector is not the largest contributor in the GDP. Solutions that enable farm
automation and aggregation can rationalise and gainfully redistribute the workforce.

The first question comes into our mind is why we are discussing agriculture today.

It is important to note that despite the lockdown and the supply-chain impacted nationwide,
the government is working overtime to ensure easy availability of vegetables, fruits, dairy
and other essentials. Even in such a crisis, agriculture took centre-stage. And why is that?
Because ‘food’ can never go out of business. After all it is a basic necessity for survival.

However, we have witnessed that agriculture cannot survive solely on traditional methods
and desperately needs large-scale technology intervention to resolve various pre/post-harvest
problems, which will in turn boost healthy production and revenue. Farmers and agritech
startups in India have evolved rapidly over the past few years due to digital penetration and
funding.

Indian agritech startups have received 300 per cent more funding in the first six months of
2019 than the total funding received in 2018. Exact figures are as follows. Agritech
companies raised $ 248 million until June 2019, which was only $ 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.

NinjaCart a food processing startup remained the top-funded Indian startup with funding of $
89 mn received in 2019.

One interesting fact that I come across while preparing this topic is ,

Every 9th agritech startup in the world is from India. Compared to 3,103 global agritech
startups, there are 450 agritech startups operating in India, which are growing at 25 per cent
annually.

Agritech is a quite fascinating word but first we need to find out the reason for the need of
agritech in agriculture sector
Fundamental issues like poor soil quality, water shortage, low quality seeds, climate change,
lack of market access, inadequate storage facilities, ill-equipped warehouses, malpractices
and poor credit facility has crippled the agriculture sector.

Now the only hope is agri-tech companies can fill this gap quickly with the help of high-end
technology like GIS(Geographical information system mapping), Blockchain, Artificial
Intelligence, remote sensing, data analytics and various Internet of Thing (IoT) devices.

As problems mentioned in the agricultural sector are quite common and well known, a doubt
will arise, how these technologies can solve these issues.

These agritech strartups are following different business models like Farm to mill, Farm to
Fork, Farm to warehouse, Farming as a service to resolve the discussed issues.

Farm to Fork is a model which cater Business to business transaction. Rather than taking the
agricultural products to the end consumers, supplying food materials to the companies which
are using these goods like restaurants, retail store, food product industries etc.

Farm to mill model is directly sending the harvested product to the mill hoppers for
processing. It is mainly used in sugarcane harvesting. It reduces the transportation cost,
loading and unloading time by inplant a conveyer which directly carries the products to the
mill hoppers.

Farm to warehouse model – here the products are directly sent to the warehouses which
provides real time data access throughout the country which helps both farmers and buyers to
communicate and make the deal. It enhances the foreign exports also. At the same time
farmers can hold their perishable goods in good condition for long time which gives upper
hand to the farmers in negotiations.

According to NASSCOM, Post-harvest loss in India alone amounts to $ 13 billion. Demand-

driven cold chains, warehouse monitoring solutions and market linkage can significantly
decrease such losses and boost farmer incomes. Technologies like block chain, data analytics
comes into picture to improve the transparency and data sharing.

Farming as a service (FAAS) – This model is very much similar to our cab hailing apps. This
app facilitates renting out the agricultural equipment, technologies and other agricultural
needs for land preparation, crop harvesting and management by connecting the supplier and
the consumer at affordable price. This model is very much suitable for India because 86% of
India’s farmers are small and marginal as per Agriculture Census 2015-16. Farmers need
those products for three to four months in a year. So owning those products costs more for the
farmers and many can’t afford these technologies. Some big Automobile players like
Mahindra and Mahindra also own a agritech startup called Trringo, based on FAAS model.
As they are producing new technologies in the agricultural sector in their tractor division it is
easy for them to explore a new sector to grow their business.
Another startup called Agribolo working in the FAAS model aims to break through the
current and established agricultural trend, which is usually controlled by moneylenders and
middlemen. They are proposing a model to overcome the farmers' crippling debt and
consistent crop failures. This model is called partnership and co-ownership model. Here they
are offering different services. They are offering land for agricultural activities which farmers
can use for crop production and they share the profits or they offer all the technical assistance
for the crop production or they took land from the farmers who lost belief in farming and give
it to other farmers who like to do farming. Farmers can choose any one of these models.

Another initiative of this start up is Kisan Seva Kendra provides farmers with the opportunity
to connect with banks and financial organisations, and aims to reduce the farm interest rates
from the current 24 percent to 10 percent per annum. This is possible because of digitalized
agricultural solutions they are providing based on data analytics and blockchain attract the
investors and the data transparency helps them to streamline their investments.

Agritech firms are equipped to provide viable farming solutions and the activity in this
industry will multiply manifold post the lockdown. These enterprises will create positive
impact and will lead India's journey towards overall digital agriculture transformation.

Hence emphasis should be on innovation, data-sharing, easy access to working capital,

infrastructure and enable real-time information access to farmers across the country.

The future of agritech will be developing models which is fully automated and provide
completely integrated supply chain. Combining AI with GIS will take decisions
autonomously on all the day to day activities of farming till the supply of food products to the
end consumers.

The government has also started to show interest in the field of agritech. Maharashtra
launched ‘Agri – Tech’ scheme for digitally tracking agriculture management, Karnataka set
up an Agritech fund of $ 2.5 million, NITI Aayog has started a pilot project on precision
agriculture using AI and Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra have launched an agri open
data portal to promote technology as an important tool in agriculture.

This is how agritech rebranding the agriculture sector which will boon exponentially in next
five years and expected to produce 90 million jobs by 2024. Keep update yourself. Thanks
for listerning.
References:

https://yourstory.com/2019/03/faas-agritech-startup-farmers-profitable-6zmc83lyci

https://www.nasscom.in/knowledge-center/publications/agritech-india-emerging-trends-2019

https://yourstory.com/2019/08/startup-chennai-waycool-foods-farm-fork-supply-chain-b2b

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/startups/newsbuzz/a-golden-opportunity-in-crisis-
decoding-agri-tech-post-pandemic/articleshow/75499858.cms

https://www.financialexpress.com/industry/sme/indian-agritech-startups-to-generate-90-lakh-jobs-
see-300-increase-in-funding/1686336/