India has a rich legacy in agricultural productivity due to its vast agro-ecological diversity. Agriculture remains the primary source of livelihood for around 58% of India’s population. The Indian food industry is poised for massive growth, increasing its contribution to global food trade annually. As technology penetration deepens across one of the world’s largest agricultural industries, Indian agritech startups are poised to unlock multi-billion-dollar opportunities. Let us take a look at some of the top agritech startups in India.
Ergos, founded in 2012 by Kishor Kumar Jha and Praveen Kumar, offers a nine-month storage service for farmers’ harvests. The platform provides credit for up to 70% of the stored grains, connecting farmers to potential buyers.
It offers secure warehouse storage for grains and collaborates with lending partners to provide affordable financial solutions. By assisting farmers in digitizing their produce, Ergos enables them to transform their crops into tradable digital assets. Currently, the startup claims to be aiding over 160,000 farmers through its platform, with a vast network of warehouses in over 200 locations across Bihar, Karnataka, and Maharashtra. It claims to have assisted farmers in boosting their annual income by 30-35% over the years.
Launched by Alekh Sanghera and Mehtab Singh Hans in 2016, FarMart operates as a micro SaaS-led agritech platform, helping large food businesses source quality produce by using its network of agri-retailers. It utilizes technology and data to source at scale and leverages underutilized assets in the food value chain to build a high-growth and profitable business. Since its inception, the startup has raised more than $44 million from investors like Omidyar Network India, Avaana Capital, 500 Startups, and Matrix Partners India.
Established in 2019 by Arpit Agarwal and Sakshi Agarwal, Farmtheory is an agri-waste management startup committed to mitigating waste at its source, empowering farmers to enhance their income, mitigate food loss, and combat climate change. With a two-pronged approach aimed at boosting farm yields and supplying premium ingredients to commercial kitchens, Farmtheory has effectively enlisted over 3,000 partner farmers and catered to over 1,500 kitchens to date.
Established in 2018 by Shailendra Tiwari and Ananda Verma, Fasal operates as a precision horticulture platform, facilitating resource optimization (water, pesticides, etc.) and enhancing farm productivity while ensuring the procurement of high-quality, traceable produce. The agritech startup orchestrates an end-to-end optimized value chain by leveraging AI, crop sciences, and IoT (Internet of Things) to offer farm-level, crop-specific, and crop-stage-specific intelligence. Fasal has secured more than $17 million in total funding to date from investors like ITI Growth Opportunities Fund, Navam Capital, 3one4 Capital, Omnivore, Wavemaker Partners, and Genting Ventures.
Founded in 2016 by Tauseef Khan, Nishant Vats, and Harshit Gupta, Gramophone is an Indore-based full-stack agritech platform facilitating activities ranging from sourcing raw materials to warehousing. The startup sells agri inputs like seeds, fertilizers, nutrients, pesticides, and farming equipment, and provides standalone services such as warehousing and inventory management. It also assists farmers by offering crop advisory and weather information, providing agronomic intelligence and solutions through image recognition, soil science, smart crop selection, and personalised information-led cropping systems.
Launched in 2016 by Milan Sharma, Nishant Mishra, Himani Shah, and Devendra Chandan, the Gurugram-based startup Intello Labs uses AI and image recognition tools to perform grading and quality checks of agricultural products. The startup manufactures several sorting, grading, and packaging machines, which eliminate manual labour at various steps of agricultural production and streamline the process.
Founded amidst the pandemic in 2020 by Vivek Nirmal and Nidhi Nirmal, KisanKonnect has rapidly expanded its network to encompass 5,000 farmers. The startup directly sources food from these farmers through its village-level collection centres. This startup distributes sourced products in the Mumbai and Pune markets while providing its services directly to customers through both its mobile app and farm stores. It claims to manage over 175,000 acres of cultivated land and provides access to more than 200 types of vegetables and 100 types of fruits through its online platform. The startup also claims to deliver approximately 150,000 boxes of vegetables and fruits every month.
The Bengaluru-based startup Ninjacart, founded by Nagarajan, Sharath Loganathan, Sachin Jose, Kartheeswaran KK, and Vasudevan Chinnathambi in 2015, procures groceries, fruits, and vegetables from farmers and delivers them directly to supermarkets and other retail stores. This startup claims to source over 1,400 tonnes of fresh produce daily from farmers hailing from over 20 states and supplies the produce to over 17,000 retail stores.
Following his tenure as the Vice President of Operations at Swiggy, Kedar Gokhale teamed up with Aishwarya Ramakrishnan to establish Orbit Farming. Dedicated to catering to the needs of mid-sized Indian farmers with 2 to 10 hectares of farmland, Orbit Farming offers customised farm solutions. The founders aim to assist these farmers in boosting their farm income by offering a platform that provides farming mechanization solutions, thereby enabling them to achieve greater profitability.
Founded in 2020 by Varun Khurana and Prashant Jain, Otipy is a part of the agritech startup Crofarm Agriproducts. Otipy functions as a B2B2C social commerce platform specializing in fresh produce, including vegetables, fruits, dairy, and various grocery essentials. Utilizing its in-house technology, the startup sources fresh produce directly from farmers, driven by demand predictions generated by its proprietary engines. It then delivers the goods to customers within 12 hours of harvest. This startup claims to have the lowest wastage rate in the industry at 3%.
