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HomePosts Tagged "Hemendra MathuR"
Acquaculture, AgroPolicy

NN Sinha, Secretary, Ministry of Rural Development was addressing, the first conference on Fishtech, organised by the industry chamber FICCI.  

It is crucial to have an integrated chain of activities when organising fish farmers, especially those who are poor, said NN Sinha, Secretary, Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India, at the First Conference on Fishtech, organised by the industry chamber FICCI.  

Delivering the Special address, Sinha alluded to the need to develop an integrated structure akin to the dairy sector. “There is a lot of scope for developing such a value chain”, he said. The secretary also referred to growing seaweed, ornamental fishing, and cage culture as viable livelihood activities. “We think aquaculture is an important livelihood option for a large number of people”, he said, adding, “we will work with everyone in the sector”.

A FICCI PwC report, “Championing the blue economy: Promoting sustainable growth of fisheries sector in India”, was released on occasion. The report showcases the potential of India’s fisheries sector, trends, opportunities, challenges, and strategic interventions needed to support the blue economy in India and build a sustainable and profitable future for the industry.

Speaking on occasion, Hemendra Mathur, Chairman, FICCI- Taskforce on Agri-Startups, said, “we need a dedicated fund for fishery start-ups, which can put in early-stage funding for start-ups trying to build interesting models and features”.

 Further, Mathur said, “We should at least have 500 fishtech start-ups in the country, given the sector’s potential. All start-ups put together account for less than 2-3 per cent of the market potential”. He said that fishery is an important sector with more than 1.5 crore fishermen engaged in the activity and its contribution to GDP being more than USD30 billion.

 Noting the considerable headroom for growth, Mathur alluded to the need to develop an innovation ecosystem in fishtech on the lines of agriculture and said, over the last five to seven years; we saw 1500-plus agri-tech startups in the country due to ecosystem development.

Shashi Kant Singh, Executive Director, Agri & Natural Resources, PWC, also noted the potential of increasing the use of technology and, further, the headroom available to increase the production, exports and domestic consumption in the fishery sector. He added that a lot of “policy support”, “ecosystem support”, and “well-designed schemes” were introduced by the government during the last four to five years.

 Devleena Bhattacharjee, Chair, FICCI Committee on Fishtech and Founder & CEO, Numer8 Analytics, said, “India is the second largest fish producing country in the world and contributes to about 7.56% of the global fish production. She noted that the fishery sector is a sunrise sector owing to tremendous scope in domestic consumption and expansion, strong export potential and greater economic returns with strong policy support.

NN Sinha, Secretary, Ministry of Rural Development

Interaction, Opinions, Sustainability

Indian agriculture needs to adapt innovations to become sustainable and profitable for farmers. There are multiple challenges facing Indian agriculture including climate change, water stress, and deterioration of soil health, price volatility and farmer’s lack of motivation to continue farming. Climate risks are more pronounced in the form of high temperatures, flash floods, delayed / erratic monsoon, shifting cropping patterns, depletion of water table, nutrient deficiency in the soil adversely impacting productivity and farm incomes.

There are estimated to be about 150 million farmers in India with the majority of them (more than 85 per cent) owning less than two hectares of farmland. A farmer with average land holding of about one hectare earns gross income of about Rs 120,000 to meet his personal, family and occupational needs. Farmers are often left with little surplus for productive investment in new age solutions.
As demonstrated by about 1300 plus agritech startups, innovations can go a long way in improving farm economics with improved yield, reduced cost of inputs and empowering farmers to de-risk against commodity price fluctuations, monsoon failures, yield loss etc. The growing breed of agri-entrepreneurs is working towards improving farmer access to markets, quality inputs, institutional credit, and insurance to derisk farming.

Indian startups are building models to derisk farming through following six interventions:

Demand driven and tech enabled aggregation and distribution of farm produce from point of collection to consumption (examples:Bigbasket, Innoterra, WayCool, Suri Agrofresh, Agrowave, Hesa, DeHaat, SuperZop, Agribolo, SMP Agro, Licious, Captain Fresh, Numer8, AquaConnect, Mango Dairies, Oxecart, Greenikk, Krishi Sahyog, Agrigator). Majority of models are B2B targeted at
institutional buyers, modern trade, Horeca, though direct to consumer models (D2C) are also picking up especially during pandemic.

Building near-farm storage, warehouse and processing units to reduce food loss with access to post-harvest finance and market linkage through digital and physical modes (examples: Our Food, S4S Technologies, Agri Bazaar, Arya.ag, Origo, Ergos, Promethean, Inficold, Whrrl). Micro-warehousing and farm level processing is likely to gain momentum with increasing demand for value added foods.

Optimise the use of agricultural inputs and enable delivery to farmers based on farm and crop diagnostics (examples: Agrostar, BigHaat, Behtar Zindagi, Unnati, Gramophone, Freshokartz, Plantix, Hesa, EF Polymer, Bharat Rohan). The last mile delivery and need for multiple compliances to store and sell agri inputs are some of the bottlenecks to scale.

Reduce labour cost and dependence through mechanisation through the pay-per-use model and innovative mechanical tools (examples: Sickle innovations, Distinct Horizon, Kamal Kisan,
Mera Tractor, Cellestial Tractors, Tractor Junction, Khetibadi, Flybird, Toolsvilla). There is a huge opportunity in building smart affordable multipurpose mechanical tools at one end and on the other end to build high end robotics and computer vision models to bring efficiency in doing multiple farm operations.

Farmer advisory and data driven crop monitoring / precision farming to reduce cost of production and crop loss: Farm advisory using data collected from the farm on soil, crop and weather using AI/ML tools is becoming mainstream, though monetisation of such models are still evolving (examples: SatSure, RMSI, CropIn, Mantle Labs, Stellapps, Krishi Tantra, AgRisk, Skymet) Agri fintech to reduce the cost of capital and make insurance available to farmers: Data and digitisation is the precursor to innovative farmer and value chain financing models which typically enables farmer KYC, onboarding, and digital tools for risk assessment. Many of these models continue to be phygital. Some of them are now building and distributing insurance products. (Examples: Samunnati, Agrifi, Jai-Kisan, GreyMatter Technologies, IBISA, Gramcover).

These models have been catalytic in improving farm economics to the tune of Rs 10,000 to Rs 50,000 per hectare, depending on the crop through reduction in input, labour, water cost and improving incomes through buyer discovery and value addition. With the number of agritech startups likely to touch 10,000 in the next few years, it is possible that almost 80-90 per cent of farmers in India will have access to these solutions in time to come.

Indian agriculture needs to adapt innovations to