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Tuesday / April 16. 2024

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HomePosts Tagged "Agri-tech"
Agrotech, Company News, India, Sustainability

The partnership will promote innovation and digitalisation of PMFBY and strengthen risk financing for a resilient farm sector in India

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Absolute Foods, a leading bioscience company specialising in agri-tech, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to strengthen the government of India’s flagship Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) and enhance the resilience of the farmers.

The partnership between UNDP India and Absolute Foods aims to enhance the implementation of the PMFBY and the Restructured Weather-Based Crop Insurance Scheme by building technical capabilities of the scheme and digitalising service delivery of crop insurance and agricultural credit processes to increase the reach and uptake of the schemes. It will also promote credit profiling of farmers, agri-entrepreneurs, and Farmer Producers Organisations (FPOs), for accurate crop loss assessment and risk evaluation to mobilise agriculture financing.

UNDP and Absolute Foods will also use advanced technology and data-driven solutions to facilitate farmland identification and enhance farm monitoring, R&D, and analytical capabilities to facilitate data-driven policymaking and fraud analytics, ensuring efficient and transparent delivery of government support to vulnerable farmers.

Speaking on the partnership, Agam Khare, Founder & CEO, of Absolute Foods, says, “There are around 150 million farmers in India. We feel privileged to partner with UNDP India to enhance the risk resilience and protection of the farming community in India. With this collaboration, we are moving one step closer to achieving our goal of empowering farmer communities & making agriculture climate resilient in India.”

UNDP has been working with the Ministry of Agriculture & Family Welfare since 2018. In 2022, UNDP’s technical support unit at the Ministry helped reach out to 1.71 crore farmers through various information, education, and communication (IEC) campaigns such as Crop

Insurance Week and organised more than 2.39 lakh Fasal Bima Pathshalas or crop insurance classroom sessions.

“Risk is an inherent part of agriculture and is one of the biggest roadblocks in improving the lives of farmer communities in India. This collaboration is an important step towards strengthening the risk and credit ecosystem for agriculture in India. UNDP India is committed to working with the government and partners to help farmers in India rise with resilience”, says Amit Kumar, Head, Sustainable and Inclusive Growth, at UNDP India.

The partnership will promote innovation and digitalisation

Agrotech, Company News, E-commerce, India, Sustainability

BioVeda is building an integrated full-stack Agri-tech platform to bring digital efficiency to the agriculture ecosystem. 

BioVeda Agro Ventures India’s first integrated online platform for farmers has recently secured an undisclosed amount of seed funding from India Accelerator’s Angel Investors’ network – iAngels. 

Incepted in February 2022, the Agri-tech platform brings a wide range of Agri- services for farmers to sell their Agri-produce, buy Agri-inputs and avail of credit facilities at lower interest rates on a single Digital Platform.


BioVeda plans to allocate the majority of funds to Business Expansion & Technology. 

Mahua Hazra, Co-founder & CEOof BioVeda Agro Ventures said, “We are delighted to have completed the seed funding round that will give us an impetus to seize the market opportunity & drive expansion. We are ready to dive into the fastest growing sector of Financial Inclusion and Rural E-Commerce. We believe that our business model will play a crucial role in easing the farmers’ access to better Credit facilities; Agri inputs supplies and help them obtain the best rates for their Agri-produce. We operate by the principle of Aggregation & we are confident that our Data Driven Farmer engagement will help in understanding the real needs of the Farmer and would eventually lead to empowering multiple industries through AI and our Predictive SCM. Most importantly, I am glad that we are able to generate Rural employment through incentive-based employment programs and are contributing towards Nation building.”

Commenting on the investment, Deepak Nagpal, Managing Partner & Business Head for iAgri (IA’s Agritech Vertical) said, “BioVeda is a fantastic example of inducing sustainable agriculture practices and super growth metrics in a very short span of time. With an increasing number of farmers looking to foster stable and continuous production, BioVeda’s integrated advanced Agri-tech platform will actually add moolah in the Farmer’s pocket. We have invested in the start-up with great zeal and we look forward to witnessing fast paced growth and profitability.”

Commenting on the growth strategy, Kaushik Dasgupta, Co-Founder & COOsaid; “BIOVEDA is backed by a strong team of founders, with a cumulative 120+ years of experience. India has 7 lakh+ villages and each village is an average business opportunity of INR 5-8 Cr annually. In a short span of 10 months, we have built a robust network of farmers in a select few states. We are currently working with 25 distributors, 300+ Kisan Mitras (VLEs) and over 25,000 Farmers, all digitally enabled. BioVeda aims to cover 10,000+ Villages and 1 million Farmers by the end of the next Financial Year. The right mix of technology and physical presence (Phygital Model) on the ground is the key to our fast-track growth.”

With mobile penetration at its peak, the data collection and automated verification that the company is doing at the root level for every farmer bring a huge set of opportunities, benefitting the FPOs ecosystem in the country as well. 

BioVeda is building an integrated full-stack Agri-tech