4th edition of ‘FICCI Agri Startup Summit & Awards discuss ways to nurture agri innovations

Experts emphaise on how innovations played a key role in green and white revolution

Dr Trilochan Mohapatra, Secretary (DARE) & Director General, ICAR, Government of India emphasised that nurturing agri innovations is imperative for agricultural development. Innovations played a key role in green and white revolution.

Addressing the 4th edition of ‘FICCI Agri Startup Summit & Awards’, Dr Mohapatra said, “The evolving technologies and agri innovations are to be mainstreamed and deployed in the fields.” Dr Mohaptra mentioned that there has to be efficiency, climate resilience and high productivity with quality and we need more and more players to be part of it.

Neelkamal Darbari, MD, Small Farmers’ Agribusiness Consortium (SFAC), Government of India said that the timing is apt to leverage technologies for the small and marginal farmers. The government has already launched the e-NAM (National Agriculture Market) which is a pan-India electronic trading portal that networks the existing APMC mandis to create a unified national market for agricultural commodities.

TR Kesavan, Chairman, FICCI National Agriculture Committee & Group President, TAFE Ltd said that FICCI Awards for agriculture start-up has emerged as a leading platform for entrepreneurs to showcase their potential.

Vivek Chandra, CEO, Global Branded Business, LT Foods, said that agri start-ups will play a crucial role in bringing in the required technology and innovation needed to meet the increasing demand for food as the world population grows.

Ashok Varma, Partner, PwC said that at present, there are more than 700 AgriTech start-ups in India that are developing customised solutions and products to make the agricultural value chain more profitable and remunerative. With an impressive inflow of funding, more than 48 per cent of AgriTech CEOs in the country believe that they will have the next AgriTech unicorn within a three-year time frame.

Amit Mundawala, MD and Co-founder, Star Agribazaar Technology highlighted that Agritech companies can play important role in enhancing farmers’ income. This can be achieved if we have a proper database of all the parameters needed in remote sensing resulting in accurate farmer advisory services which will, in turn, increase the yield, reduce the input cost, and make the proposition win-win for all stakeholders.

Hemendra Mathur, Chairman, FICCI Task Force on Agri Start-ups & Technology & Venture Partner, Bharat Innovation Fund said that Indian AgriTech is entering its third phase, which will be driven by increasing farmer adoption of new-age innovations and a significant degree of consolidation in the start-up space.

The 4th edition of FICCI Agri Start-up Awards was announced during the event along with the release of FICCI-PwC Knowledge report “Agri start-ups – Fostering collaboration to bring paradigm shifts in Indian agriculture’ and publication on Agri Start-ups by FICCI Task Force members. PwC was the knowledge partner for this event.

Experts emphaise on how innovations played a