ET Soonicorns Summit: Agritech roundtable with startups Bijak and Krishify, Omnivore’s Mark Kahn

Summary

The ET Soonicorns Summit focused on the agritech roundtable discussion featuring startups Bijak and Krishify, along with insights from Omnivore's Mark Kahn. The summit explored how technology and innovative solutions can radically transform India's agricultural sector, which faces challenges such as small farm sizes, low internet penetration, and limited access to modern machinery. Panelists, including government and industry stakeholders, highlighted the significance of public-private partnerships in addressing these challenges and stressed the role of digitization in improving market access and farmer productivity. The discussion also covered the importance of improving the financial resilience of farmers and the exciting innovations within agritech, like AI and IoT, that are paving the way for a more efficient and sustainable agricultural ecosystem in India.

Highlights

• Mark Kahn highlights the need to focus on farmer profits rather than just productivity. 💰
• The government of India is progressively supporting agritech innovations and startups. 🏛️
• Krishify's success in digitizing the farmer experience showcases the potential of agritech platforms. 🌱
• Bijak's Marketplace model strives to improve market access and reduce food wastage for farmers. 📈
• Deep Tech and Life Sciences are emerging areas within agritech with promising potential for growth. 🌟

Key Takeaways

• Agritech holds immense potential to revolutionize India's farming landscape, providing farmers with better tools and resources to enhance productivity. 🚜
• Public-private partnerships are crucial in overcoming the challenges facing India's agritech industry, including infrastructure and technology access. 🤝
• Digitization and internet penetration are key to empowering farmers with the resources and markets they need to thrive. 📱
• Achieving sustainable agricultural practices is essential for enhancing India's food security and combating climate change. 🌍
• Future innovations in agritech, like AI and IoT, promise to deliver smarter solutions to the farming community. 💡

Overview

India's agritech sector is brimming with potential, as revealed in the ET Soonicorns Summit. The roundtable, featuring representatives from startups such as Bijak and Krishify, along with industry leader Omnivore's Mark Kahn, highlighted that while the industry faces certain structural challenges, there are significant opportunities to leverage technology and innovation to transform farming in India. The push for digital solutions aims to streamline processes, reduce costs, and ultimately contribute to doubling farmers' incomes.

The summit shed light on the importance of public-private partnerships in driving agritech success. Needing cooperative efforts, these partnerships can improve infrastructure, broaden market access, and facilitate the adoption of innovative technologies across rural areas. The dialogue emphasized that despite the challenges of small farm sizes and limited digital connectivity, collaborative efforts can spur a technological revolution for the agrarian community.

Exciting developments in the industry are underway, with technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, IoT, and satellites being integrated into agricultural practices to enhance productivity and sustainability. These technological advancements, supported by increasing smartphone penetration and lower data costs, have the power to reshape the agritech landscape in India. The discussions at the summit revealed a bright future for agritech, marked by smarter farming solutions and potential IPOs for key agritech players.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 03:00: Introduction to Agritech Challenges and Speakers This chapter titled 'Introduction to Agritech Challenges and Speakers' has a transcript that starts with music, indicating it might introduce the topic with an audio-visual element. The specifics of the agritech challenges and the speakers' introduction cannot be clearly ascertained from the transcript snippet provided.
• 03:00 - 10:00: Discussion on Agritech's Market Potential and Challenges In this chapter, the focus is on discussing the market potential and challenges faced by the Agritech sector. The conversation touches upon the current technological disruptions happening in various tech fields and draws parallels with the agricultural industry in India. It highlights how the internet and technology can serve as catalysts for change in agriculture, suggesting a ripe environment for innovation and growth.
• 10:00 - 19:00: Addressing Agritech Challenges and Importance of Public-Private Partnership The chapter discusses the influence and challenges of agritech in India, featuring insights from key industry experts. The speakers include Mark Khan from Omnivore, Rajesh Ranjan from Krishify, Nikhil Dripati from Byju's, and Gaurav from AWS. They aim to provide guidance and a better understanding of the agritech space, emphasizing the role of both public and private sectors in addressing these challenges.
• 19:00 - 25:00: Digitization and Internet Penetration in Rural India The chapter discusses the impact and potential of digitization and internet penetration in rural India. It starts with a focus on the agricultural sector and its market potential, as highlighted by a report from Ernst Young. The report suggests a valuation of $24 billion. The discussion is led by moderators Pranav and another individual, who delve into the contours of this digital transformation in rural areas starting from the developments noted in September of the previous year by the Union.
• 25:00 - 32:00: Omnivore's Focus on Future of Agriculture and Food Systems The chapter covers an initiative announced by Minister Narendra Singh Kumar, called the Digital Agricultural Mission 2021-2025. This mission aims to utilize advanced technologies such as AI, blockchain, and drone technology to enhance the performance of the agricultural sector in India. However, it acknowledges the challenges faced due to the complexity of India's agricultural landscape, where most farmers are categorized as small or marginal, having less than five acres of land.
• 32:00 - 46:00: Challenges and Opportunities in Agritech and Technology Adoption The chapter discusses the challenges and opportunities in the field of agritech and technology adoption, focusing on several key issues such as low economies of scale, limited access to technology, high marketing costs, and low productivity. It highlights the significance of these challenges and identifies major pain points in the industry. A key point of discussion is the role of public-private partnerships in addressing these challenges, emphasizing the importance of collaboration between agritech startups and government entities. The chapter explores how closely these startups are working with the government in order to increase the adoption of agritech solutions, proposing that such partnerships are crucial for overcoming existing barriers and achieving broader technological adoption in the agricultural sector. Mark is invited to provide further insights on these topics.
• 46:00 - 54:00: Conclusion and Final Thoughts The chapter titled 'Conclusion and Final Thoughts' addresses the challenges of establishing technological infrastructure in areas lacking foundational systems. Mark discusses the difficulty of building mobile networks in countries without landline infrastructure, the challenges of developing fintech in regions with limited rural bank penetration, and the complexities of executing last-mile logistics where stable addresses are nonexistent. This discussion highlights the unique hurdles and innovative solutions required to adapt technology to diverse and underserved environments.

ET Soonicorns Summit: Agritech roundtable with startups Bijak and Krishify, Omnivore’s Mark Kahn Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 foreign [Music]
• 00:30 - 01:00 foreign Tech space and how space is right for disruption with uh you know India's agricultural industry and how internet and Technology can
• 01:00 - 01:30 shape the way Farmers go about doing uh agriculture in India so we have uh speakers here who uh who can who can guide us and help us understand the space much better we have Mark Khan managing partner of venture capital firm omnivore Rajesh ranjan founder krishify we have nikhil dripati co-founder by Jack and gaurav from um from AWS I am
• 01:30 - 02:00 pranav and I will be moderating the session and I'd like to dive straight deep into the uh into the into the conversation about you know about the aggregate space and it is penetration as far as uh the market potential is concerned uh it's it's 24 billion as per uh report by Ernst young and uh last year in September the union
• 02:00 - 02:30 Minister uh Narendra Singh Kumar announced the initiative of digital agricultural Mission 2021 to 2025. so the initiative aims to sort of Leverage a wide range of Technology from Ai blockchain and all the way to drone technology to improve the agriculture sector's overall performance but given the complexity of India's agricultural setup uh with you know most Farmers categories as small or marginal having less than five acres of
• 02:30 - 03:00 land low economies of scale limited access technology high marketing costs low productivity uh how challenging is this and what are the pain points uh fundamentally and how important is public private partnership here for increased adoption of of agritech and how closely do agritech startups work with the government in the space so I'd like Mark to answer this
• 03:00 - 03:30 first and then there's a question that I want I'd like to hear from everyone but if Mark if you could start off it'll be great sure I'll flip the question how challenging is it to build a mobile network in a country that never really had landlines or how challenging is it to build fintech in in a country where Rural Bank penetration was or how challenging is it to do last mile Logistics delivery when no one has a stable address the answer is about the
• 03:30 - 04:00 same and and that is to say that that everything that we're doing in the startup universe is is hard we're fixing the hardest problems that that exist in India and that's not just agritech that's everyone working Logistics that's everyone working right fintech that's everyone that's that's worked on digital identity and worked for two decades right on mobile connectivity like yeah everything is hard the problem in agriculture is we've been telling ourselves this this
• 04:00 - 04:30 story for seven decades that the only thing to talk about is poverty right and the worst forgive me are the journalists um because they've been stuck on a garibi hotel kick for so long that it's impossible for them to understand that we're talking about 13 crore people here who you cannot generalize right in a single sentence you know what no one would say oh 130 million people are all just like this right so we have 130 million farmers in
• 04:30 - 05:00 India some of them are progressive and some aren't some are very poor some are poor some are not so poor we have Farmers that are doing Advanced agriculture right if you look at our aquaculture sector we're the leading shrimp exporter in the world our poultry farmers are at globally competitive levels would I say the same is true of our you know of our pulse Farmers working on irrigated land in you know in marathara no probably not but it is impossible to generalize right
• 05:00 - 05:30 effectively you know 600 million people right 130 million farmers and their families almost half of our population and so what I would say is you know the the challenge for us isn't necessarily the structural issue of farm size China's Farm size is half of India's and yet agritech is is reasonably well penetrated there and I think the same thing is happening here I think in fact
• 05:30 - 06:00 our small farm size is facilitates some agritech models that wouldn't be required in other places farmer platforms are growing like crazy in India because they're bringing an organizational layer to this hyper-fragmented decentralized system that's really required and where a lot of value can be created um I think the reality is you know it's it's small farming and and the smallholder system is what we have right the same way that that in urban India we had low
• 06:00 - 06:30 average spends right um and and these are fundamental or or that in logistics we had you know weak infrastructure and these are challenges but they're challenges that with technology and with the right teams can be overcome would you like to add you know what more you know as to the fundamental challenges of this space and you know like I mean if if small farm size is not a challenge then what else really is the problem that you face every day and
• 06:30 - 07:00 something that you wish was not there yes so a very good question and I totally agree with Mark what he mentioned right although small uh or I would say medium-sized Farm to add a lot of uh I would say challenges are a lot a lot of variables in between but it's not the sole cause of this problem so uh in India if you realize like for most of the people right who are doing farming as a business for them it's a lifestyle business and most of the time they have
• 07:00 - 07:30 suffered from one thing or other although like digitalization is not something which is inescapable but the rate at which these people are getting digitalized has been pretty slow in the past for a farmer to trust on a digital app for the first time to do a trade is something like a nightmare for him coming through it and this has to go deep down all the way from Northeast to South to Central India to Jammu and Kashmir right so to make it or to make any of the infrared each to the all the
• 07:30 - 08:00 remote locations in India and uh make it serve the purpose it was meant for right so what we have realized like uh Market access is still something which is on paper but many many of our customers have been suffering and we saw less than I I would say it's 0.0 less than point zero zero one percent of the problems which exist so we have to realize like although a portion of these people are poor or or below poverty line but there have been people who have been a very
• 08:00 - 08:30 traditional player and who have been doing successfully profitable businesses since decades and they are the actual one who are acting as a backbone of this entire value chain we need to leverage the existing infrastructure and push digitalization first on these people a government as a body would only help you in building the infrastructure but adoption is something which would come from the people and from the farmers and from the businesses and so we need to act in coordination with other startups other other government bodies and
• 08:30 - 09:00 including the local FPS or the local bodies which exist in the ecosystem and then I have to see this as a combined problem for the ecosystem and solve it okay uh would you like to uh add more to that Rajesh on um sure so see uh I agree as Mark said that being small and marginal land holding uh or being small and marginal Farmers is not the only challenge uh or is not the real challenge actually
• 09:00 - 09:30 so see a lot of innovation is happening around Precision farming around deep technology better input right but the problem is adoption and how or or distribution of these innovations that are happening you know in silos so in any industry if you see so digitalization is very necessary for distribution or adoption fast adoption of these Innovations right because unless farmers are digital distribution is uh very uh very difficult right and uh from for that manner especially in
• 09:30 - 10:00 our ecosystem uh smartphone has really played that game right that's that's the real Innovation because of smartphone uh and you know recently uh cheap internet access you know uh internet penetration has really happened right so that makes the adoption uh fast but today uh you know how many farmers are digital and how many of them are actually using digital platforms for their day-to-day business which is agriculture right so once that happens I think rest of the things can be you know sorted with lots
• 10:00 - 10:30 of parallel Innovations already running but even if those Innovation happen and farmers are not digital yet or farmers are not using any any digital platform uh that that will remain the biggest uh challenge the question is you know the small farmlands also is is a result of low income as well right so doesn't that I mean that's where the uh isn't that a challenge I mean in the sense like you know the low income being associated with low
• 10:30 - 11:00 adoption of Technology uh has has that never come across as a challenge for you Rajesh uh so see uh you know on one side we talk about uh fast penetration of smartphones uh in in the rural so there are some numbers like 900 plus Internet users uh in India uh out of that around 375 million are from rule right and when we say rural so we can assume that 70 of them are directly or indirectly associated with agriculture right so 250 million plus stakeholders are today
• 11:00 - 11:30 online using smartphones using internet right so so when you talk about can you solve the problem for all uh you know stakeholders which is around uh 500 million to 600 million odd number or specifically talking about the farmer uh you know population of 130 million right so can you solve everything at once for all of them maybe no right because there are different types of farmers so there are very lower income farmers who probably cannot afford a smartphone
• 11:30 - 12:00 today or Internet even today right apart from that 130 million there are 120 250 million Farm laborers as well right so they cannot probably or majority of them probably cannot afford a smartphone right so probably you know they in in the cycle of uh Innovation and and this whole Revolution they might come at a slightly later stage right so today we are talking about at least those 50 formal population who are already online who are capable of using digital ecosystems distal platforms to leverage
• 12:00 - 12:30 better farming techniques better uh you know tools adoption uh more opportunities right uh so yeah I mean I mean that's also it's a cycle not everybody uh might leverage it at once but uh it's it's a natural progression basically perspective like you know what if what are the challenges that you see in the in the space line what are some of the
• 12:30 - 13:00 pain points that that you think that needs to be addressed so while I agree uh with uh Mark nikhil and Rajesh on the you know challenges what they've spoken about uh I would also like to uh you know add on some challenges like you know uh one of the main challenges but what uh in my view is a lack of knowledge about Innovative methods Farmers continue to rely on traditional liver intensive methods tattoo with limited access to Modern Machinery Logistics and you know
• 13:00 - 13:30 analytical data such as soil composition or climate patterns so another one is like unpredictable climate so we have to count for that you know crop yields are directly vulnerable to adverse weather natural processes such as soil degradation or pest attacks and another one is like you know logistic and supply chain there is lack of transparency on you know pricing and lack of accountability which has a direct effect on market price and customer trust which is again becoming a
• 13:30 - 14:00 challenge when it comes to finance you know Finance to traditional method of farming you know uh having said that uh we are seeing agritech startups you know trying to solve many of these challenges and uh after pandemic uh uh covet has also produced some of uh you know produced some uh Tailwinds uh you know with Farmers depending on some of the startups for their services uh but I believe uh we have to uh you know now with the Advent of the digital India story what we are building here right
• 14:00 - 14:30 everyone from the Pharma to distributor to the end consumer is increasingly becoming a connected which is I would say thanks to the resilience and uh founders moving on from the challenges I mean the next part of the question which I asked earlier was you know how important is you know the public private partnership here uh for adoption of agritech and how closely do
• 14:30 - 15:00 aggregatech startups work with the government now Mark can you uh start off with your viewpoint on this yeah I mean my my viewpoint is this government in particular and many state governments have actually been quite Progressive on areas regarding uh accelerating agritech you know and that's been going on for for many many years now um nabard has become a very positive Catalyst in the agritech ecosystem um you see this this government with
• 15:00 - 15:30 this uh sort of philosophical shift to doubling Farmers income making agritech startups more more Central there have been a lot of good opportunities for agritech startups to work especially you know at especially in a few States um and you can even see that now with the with the acceptance and acceleration in the Drone space where the government is being very very proactive about uh making sure that that drones can fly for agricultural monitoring and spraying that said
• 15:30 - 16:00 um you know I I would I would always be a little bit reluctant to say that that startups should spend too much time working on government related activity um I I think in general that uh you know they need to focus it's it can be a great amount of support early in a startup's life but it can also obscure the search for product Market fit and you can wind up you know uh as for lack of a better word chasing tenders for for for years and years and years and years without ever really knowing your
• 16:00 - 16:30 customer better or or proving product Market fit so I think this government is is pushing on the right things the fund funds for startups for that that's being talked about for AG uh is an exciting step that was talked about in the last budget uh the agriculture infrastructure fund is fabulous I mean it's a really really useful uh program to support the development of decentralized uh processing and post-harvest Technologies um the Drone stuff is amazing like it's great to see that taking off so sorry Dad joke
• 16:30 - 17:00 um but um but yeah you know I I think in general the government is doing the right things in the space and startups need to need to work with them to the extent uh that it makes sense but not spend all of their time working with them and and kind of missing out on the focus on the the more important customer which is the farmer that is you wanna be in um so you know I think I think it's also about reaching to a point uh or or I
• 17:00 - 17:30 would say to an equilibrium where both public parties and private parties find common ground to build at or partnership at partner ad right currently I believe that that that ground is kind of missing right and none of the parties have been able to reach there and that's the reason you know if agree take Founders have to work with the government they have to keep running you know on rfps and and the tender based methods right
• 17:30 - 18:00 so so having said that uh public private partnership that's a great initiative right and the government is bullish about it because there are certain things right uh because agriculture you know as a sector is one of the most important sector from the government's perspective right because of the population involved uh into it so they already have taken a lot of initiatives they work very closely for the uh Farmers benefit in general and somewhere this entire agreed to take ecosystem is also working with a similar kind of goal
• 18:00 - 18:30 so there are potential of these Partnerships but finding that Common Ground where these Partnerships become very easy and you know more fluid uh in terms of uh execution uh I think we are yet to rest there and nikhil can you share your thoughts on where we can find the common ground that largest I think the current current government has been very fair in terms of like giving an opportunity to New Age startups and uh in terms of at least
• 18:30 - 19:00 appreciating uh Innovations and technology in almost all the sector agriculture being a laid back sector I would say like anything or any of the policy would be last thought for this segment or would be last affecting the segment because the sector has been very slow moving so like enam by government recently they selected five edited startups of India and luckily Richard was part of it where we are closely working with the nationalized agriculture Market of India NAFTA has a body right which procures onions for
• 19:00 - 19:30 government and then give supplies to various government bodies as well as private Mondays so nafed has recently started uh at least opened the gate for a couple of every Tech startup and two is the is out there onion procurement as well as liquidation part so but given the fact that the rate at which government bodies work is very slow we as a company or as as a Founder have to actually decide whether the marginal utility of this project would be pretty
• 19:30 - 20:00 enough in terms of the cost of time we are spending there right and most of the time it's startup which has to show the eagerness or has to reach out most of the places now given the fact that the process is very tedious and it's not very open most of the time uh startups or startup Founders would very likely to miss upon the opportunities coming in but uh in terms if I compare like what it was there three or four years back compared to what it's there in 2022
• 20:00 - 20:30 things have changed a lot and of course for positive uh but uh given the fact if we see the other side right why it's important uh most of the infrastructure is already there which has been developed by government so if I talk about our business model which kind of allows the supplier to Discover account counterparty or a credible buyer Mondays are already there and since Monday exists we can find or we can figure out a credible buy so Monday is something which was developed by government and
• 20:30 - 21:00 it's still it's a very critical and Fracture infrastructure if we discuss the entire value chain a couple of warehouses or storages are still owned by government if a public-private partnership can happen over there I think the entire value chain can get optimized by by at least double digit percentage if not more moving on uh every one all of you spoke about you know digitization and how nice what about our smartphone proliferated
• 21:00 - 21:30 but still when talking about digitizing the agriculture industry in India we must look at internet penetration right which still stands at about 50 percent uh how do we make Tech more accessible uh to Farmers and can uh can I don't know like wait three years maybe like every year it slogs like I
• 21:30 - 22:00 cool like yeah I'm sorry not everything's perfect um internet penetration in rural India was 10 like five years ago so now we're at 50. so wait a couple years like it's in the cost curve has gone to a fraction of what it used to be uh handsets are getting cheaper you know you'll start having used handsets at even cheaper price points right there are certain things that I worry about this is not one of them
• 22:00 - 22:30 this is a Time function and I mean what more disruption can we see here right I mean the the Geo effect or whatever that happened in 2016 and it's slowly sort of like you know the 4G Revolution or whatever is slowing down is there anything that you know anything in the rural Market that can probably I mean that can probably accelerate I mean from 50 to to the next I mean it was like 40 like before covet so
• 22:30 - 23:00 like it's kind of going at five percent a year I I don't you know are we gonna are am I gonna are we gonna be able to do much about this you know probably not honestly make like maybe there's a rural digitization effort the government wants to do but like you know this is going to come down to like Modi Ambani adani this is like way above our pay grade man uh god of
• 23:00 - 23:30 yeah sure see uh rural India is uh becoming digital Savvy I mean as Max said rightly like the smartphone and internet users increasing 30 percent uh you know cagr in the last four to five years right and if you talk about 2020 there were around 300 million internet users in rural India itself and the Prime Minister Wi-Fi access network interface scheme is delivering Broadband services to rural areas I mean you know all together creating a 2 million public
• 23:30 - 24:00 uh Wi-Fi access points by the end of 2021 that was the goal right and there has been significant decline in the cost of Technology access as well for example internet data cost now decreased to 64 64 percent uh you know over the last three years and you know from uh 18.5 uh per GB to you know so INR 6.7 uh you know this year so lower cost smartphone devices are improving access as well and
• 24:00 - 24:30 Tech is actually you know being accessed by Farmers today which is the good news and farmers are using YouTube for example to be able to see whether the advice they are receiving really makes sense to help them in solving that uh solving or helping them take decision uh for their use cases right and some of the agritech apps also we have seen they have managed to penetrate this audience and bring them onto their apps which indicates whether there is a value in what they are doing or not another Revenue that can help make Tech
• 24:30 - 25:00 more accessible is to include local or Regional languages support to reach out to a wider audience and in some ways it is like uh you know our own Evolution where we started using apps for you know social media and entertainment heavily but have now shifted to using apps for our productivity use cases and I think I I foresee an evolution happening which will take time but uh it will happen do you see
• 25:00 - 25:30 any other way to make Tech more accessible okay see uh largely it's a Time function but I think the extension of your question is can agritech become the Catalyst uh behind increased or fast-paced penetration of uh you know internet uh see very you know in a very optimistic way I would say I would love to wait for the day when a feature phone user in rural India and and uh you know mostly a farmers uh buys a smartphone to access some of
• 25:30 - 26:00 these active Services right and and I would love to by all means I would love to you know see if that is happening that starts happening with the aspiration of being on a platform let's say like pressure file right because in the past we have seen this in order to use WhatsApp people have bought smartphone uh who are earlier on uh you know on a feature phone so if some of these Services become so great right uh so magnificent that really become uh you know game changing for for the farmers
• 26:00 - 26:30 for the rural Indians then why not I mean I mean these Innovations can also play a role uh when when smartphone really becomes that kind of aspiration that it becomes a must-have thing so even those who don't own a smartphone today right and if uh it becomes you know kind of uh necessary or mandatory for them to buy a new one uh moving on I have a specific question from Mark uh the you at omnivore you fund uh
• 26:30 - 27:00 entrepreneurs building the future of Agriculture and Food Systems uh right uh your portfolio includes several agree Tech startups from B to B to SAS to Internet of Things So when it comes to agriculture there's no other problem so the the canvas disrupt and bring in efficiency is is pretty vast so what according to you would be the two or three big challenges that
• 27:00 - 27:30 need to be tackled first in the space are there any Innovation that you are particularly excited about in the near future sure let me let me answer that separately so we think there are sort of four big challenges that broadly need to be tackled in this space uh which is what what we describe as our theory of change so we think the first challenge is radically increasing the profitability of farming not the productivity the profitability the bottom line that goes to Farmers is another way of saying doubling Farmers income or more so right
• 27:30 - 28:00 we have to make farming a remunerative a remunerative profession um the second is making Farmers more economically resilient so it's not just that at any given period they need to make more money the radical swings in income that Define being a farmer pushes people out of farming right it's it's like the world's most stressful job right one year you know what if if one year you made three locks and the next year you made one lack and
• 28:00 - 28:30 the year after that you made five lakhs and then you made two laps and then you made one lack it's very hard to kind of have any stability in your life and so addressing that issue of economic resilience is the second challenge that we see and that's by you know a variety of means third is this issue of agricultural sustainability we have challenges with with the amount of water that we're you know using up in in agriculture we have challenges with respect to soil uh soil Health we have huge challenges and food waste and spoilage uh and in the usage
• 28:30 - 29:00 of Natural Resources in agriculture and then finally there's this whole issue of climate action right Indian agriculture is both an emitter right 20 of India's ghd footprint comes from AG but it's also at the front lines of climate change where you know if climate change gets much worse in India the AG sector is going to be the most badly hit of of all parts of the economy and so everything we're doing we think these are like the four kind of big challenges that that we have to face if you ask me about what I'm excited
• 29:00 - 29:30 about look I I think it's a couple different big themes I I think I'm very excited about you know we we've made a lot of investments in the last few years in essentially this play around the digitization of Indian AG right so we call those platforms we call those marketplaces we call that fintech right but that that's the space that that not just an omnivore in agritech more broadly has really taken off we continue to be very bullish in that we think you're going to see larger and larger companies built in that space and you
• 29:30 - 30:00 know uh bijok and and you know crucify on this call are prime examples of of that um I think a second theme that we're very excited about is deep Tech we're starting to see more and more you know serious Innovation that's that's kind of coming that's that's scientific in nature and coming up uh whether it's in you know satellites uh hyperspectral satellites from Pixel or low-cost robots uh from Tartan sense or the cheapest Farm sensors in the world from Fussell right we're very bullish that there's
• 30:00 - 30:30 going to be some some pretty badass and even globally sold Hardware you know our first exit came from from arubaka um our first Big Exit came from arubaka and that was selling iot devices made in Vijayawada all over the world uh for the aquaculture sector so I think there's a really strong possibility to build uh some pretty cool deep tech companies in India and then the third thing that I am a uh advocate of uh even though it's still very early days is the agri-food life sciences sector in India which is
• 30:30 - 31:00 the most neglected space in our agritech ecosystem um just to give you an example if you take any of my peer VCS in Israel the US Canada or Europe 50 of their portfolios are in life sciences five percent of mine is uh and that's because there's a dearth of Life Sciences activity in India not just in agriculture and food but in human health and in every other aspect like it's just the one part of our ecosystem that's like truly weak um but I think that's starting to change we're starting to see some interesting
• 31:00 - 31:30 companies coming up that are rooted in in synthetic biology and other disciplines of Life Sciences um you know we've made we've made investments in um you know in BIO Prime we're about to announce our second life sciences investment um well technically our third um in a couple of days and um and that's part of this program that we're running right now called omnix bio which is uh specifically to accelerate the agri-food life sciences space in India and so while it's still early and
• 31:30 - 32:00 I can't Point any glowing successes it's an absolutely critical set of of Technologies and capabilities that we have to build India is missing the boat on this globally the Chinese are racing ahead the Americans are already there and we need to fix this stat and so we want to be part of the the solution to that thing about you said that being a farmer in India is the most stressful job in the world I mean I think I was reading an article somewhere that said that journalist venture capitalist Founders they're among the top uh most stressful job uh jobs in the world but
• 32:00 - 32:30 anyway as a venture capitalist you know in uh 2021 you know it was it was a record a record year for startup funding and unicorns right so um but out of the 100 plus unicorns that exist in India I mean none of them are from the agritech sector and you know how optimistic are you about unicorns emerging in this space um what's needed to enable this this growth so first of all Let me give a
• 32:30 - 33:00 rat's ass about unicorns I want to see IPOs in this space um I and I think that's coming um I think that you'll see the first IPOs of agritech startups in India probably in 2024 and 2025. I think companies like de hot Arya reishamandi will IPO I expect I expect others will as well I wouldn't be surprised if someone got the IPOs um you know with respect to you know what's a unicorn and what's not a unicorn because right now you have a lot of what I call zombie unicorns right they're they're they're eating brains
• 33:00 - 33:30 and you know they're falling apart but they still technically have that valuation I think we're building for the long term in the Agri sector I think if the 2021 boom had gone on for another six months you would have seen one or two aggro unicorns and you didn't um but I think that you'll see them emerge in in the next six to 12 months um and uh yeah but honestly that's a preoccupation for for good folks like you I I I I'm more obsessed with with
• 33:30 - 34:00 the idea that we'll have publicly traded agritech startups and India that are very successful and I think those are coming in 2024 and 2025. thanks thank you and moving on to uh um Rajesh would like your inputs on you know and what you are doing at crucify you know you've talked about building an agree worse with over 10 lakh I mean 10 million plus Farmers on your platform and over 6.5 million downloads if I'm not wrong so registered
• 34:00 - 34:30 for myself yeah yeah so what has been your strategy to uh to make this technology more accessible what you're building like you know uh can you can you share your what what your company is thinking what your strategy is okay so see on one side that's like uh 101 of product building so uh as you said 50 of rural population has internet today and uh we want them to be on crucify right because we we believe that
• 34:30 - 35:00 if they are on such a platform their uh business their livelihood everything uh can become better right so now the strategy is to how to get these people get this that get that population get that audience on on a digital platform right so that's how we have built the product right so so as I said like product 101 uh you have to understand the audience right the only thing is uh or the rather I would say the challenges is there are not many playbooks uh of the same kind so at you know uh every
• 35:00 - 35:30 day we have to put in a lot of original thinking right uh I think from the very basic first principles we have to take that kind of approach right understand what this audience uh is like what are their pain points what do they actually uh you know like to have it's not just what they need right but also what they can use uh there are a bit of challenges as we discussed in the first part of this discussion uh most of these these they are new or internet right uh
• 35:30 - 36:00 for many of them for more than 60 of them krishify is probably third or fourth or fifth app that they extensively use right so uh if you see the way they use the internet you know many of these Farmers like there is around 97 to 98 overlap with Facebook but how many of them are actually creating content on Facebook or they are creating content on YouTube right mostly they are consumers they don't do uh you know a lot of creation activities on the other side on crucify if you see
• 36:00 - 36:30 so you know uh roughly uh eight to ten percent of our users create content right and that's huge so we have to uh you know kind of we we keep iterating the product keep understanding what they are able to understand what they are not able to understand so it's not just specify learning but I will say it's it's overall internet learning that is happening for for these set of users right and that is has been the you know kind of kind of uh base of our our uh
• 36:30 - 37:00 growth so far and uh we are very optimistic about even faster growth uh in the coming months and use also you know there's also a resistance from Farmers to technology in some sense right so you use uh AI ml to provide Farmers with like personalized user experience I'm not wrong so the government initiated agree stack uh the initiative faced a lot of resistance and backlash from Farmers and it was
• 37:00 - 37:30 intended to be like a digital stack of agricultural data sets with land records and all at its core right but however Farmers have raised concerns about you know outdated an accurate record as well as data privacy so when it comes to artificial intelligence and machine learning technology they need good data set in order to function well right I mean that's crucial because that's how the the machine learning works right data is is really important so what are your thoughts on this and how do you go about building trust especially in an
• 37:30 - 38:00 industry that runs on minimal profit margins and Old School Technology and the way of doing the business not really changed in decades right so what are your thoughts so uh see both are actually two different things one is getting data from different sources and uh you know different kind of data ranging from more demographical data to a very very personal or wealth related data so getting from different channels
• 38:00 - 38:30 different sources and and uh you know kind of combining everything together on a neutral platform like digital stack that you were talking about right uh while and and that's a good strategy right because because uh a lot of things in agriculture can be can can be data driven right and uh no single Source I would say including the government has everything on a you know kind of digitized and all the data accessible uh
• 38:30 - 39:00 to a single party right so collaboration between multiple parties and getting access to the entire value chain right so for example let's say if if one company has the data of post harvesting you know they're selling Behavior and the other company has the data of uh you know the entire sowing season so so their input uh purchasing Behavior so now both can be worse and you have the entire value chain that can be leveraged by both the platforms as well as both both uh you know the entire ecosystem so they're uh sharing that kind of data uh
• 39:00 - 39:30 I mean I mean farmers do have uh friction but in our case the way you know it works today right at least today I mean in future it can change we can collaborate with uh other partners right and uh bring in their data to be able to serve Farmers you know even in an even better way but today the way it works it's it's like we have our own Universe right it's what farmers are doing the kind of activities that they do and we we try to you know uh make good insights
• 39:30 - 40:00 out of all those activities right and use it for their own benefit in terms of getting a very personalized uh you know uh experience on the platform and when when we do ml or NLP or AI to understand who this farmer is right so we are not just doing interest level analysis right we also have to understand their contemporary need right and as we say that you know so krishify has one thing which is also very different from the entire ecosystem
• 40:00 - 40:30 that we are interested in capturing the entire uh life cycle of a farmer right so in their life cycle whatever activities they are doing whatever needs they might have today right we have to address that within that you know limited time frame that they are spending with us right so so that becomes very important and that comes from our own ecosystem so so to keep it very simple of a more a far more uses crucified platform better uh personalization or better
• 40:30 - 41:00 personalized experience uh he or she is going to get thanks for that I'd like to know more about uh Isaac now uh so um hijack at the end of the day is a B2B Marketplace for for suppliers buyers uh across uh India's Agri cultural value chain so uh in in recent years the Indian agriculture sector has had many challenges and that's also the main main challenge has been the lower yields when
• 41:00 - 41:30 compared to developing nations India's Farm yield is 30 to 50 lower is what the data what we have here uh so how can agritech startups improve the overall value chain here so I I'll be this is very specific to how b-check is currently trying to solve this problem right so if you see a life cycle of a commodity right it's being grown by a farmer then it would reach to any of the Mondays and eventually it's get consumed by a consumer like us right
• 41:30 - 42:00 if if it's not getting processed now in most of the cases the farmer would decide what commodity to be grown based on the market is able to access right so far more growing onion would never want to grow a sugarcane because it doesn't has enough buyers for sugarcane let's say there is a village which grows wheat in in a season now one of the one of one out of them Farmers would not want to grow broccoli because he could not get enough buyers for anything so we have to
• 42:00 - 42:30 understand life in India or uh I mean all of the numbers cannot be compared to Global numbers because specifically in agree space the scenario keeps changing a lot of things are not even under control of humans right it's weather driven or it's temperature driven now uh at BJ we are just trying to create a Open democratized Marketplace for all the buyers and sellers of Agriculture Commodities so in Layman towns we help a seller to discover buyer and the buyer
• 42:30 - 43:00 to discover seller and that's what we envision about right and we very closely work with many of the other Equity Tech startups government bodies uh in terms of helping them to fulfill their procurements or maybe at times helping them to liquidate the produce so we are trying to optimize the value chain just by ensuring that the food wastage gets reduced a farmer is able to fetch better prices for his commodity so that he can actually choose the he wants to grow
• 43:00 - 43:30 rather than being I mean rather than this decision being driven by what the other community members are growing and in last night it's it's it's a Community Driven thing so you have to understand that most of the agriculture Commodities get shipped at a bulk level which means you need to have a critical mass of a commodity to ship it from one place from to other right I just cannot send 10 kg of rice from 10 kgs of wheat from MP to Bangalore all the way right the cost of logistics would be very high compared to
• 43:30 - 44:00 when it gets shipped at a truck 11 right in a couple of Trades the cost of logistics itself is as high as 50 to 60 percent of of of the realized produce cost so uh we have to understand like although the low yield is something which we we need to take care of but it's it's something which would require a scientific approach you need to change the seats you are using you need to change the uh maybe the menus or the fertilizers we are using and still you won't be able to get the desired outcome
• 44:00 - 44:30 because it's something which is beyond the human control and at times it would be dependent on whether or or the temperature but post produces something which most of the startups or the platforms are trying to optimize is something which is under our component it's a business form so at BJ we are trying to bring in technology and uh kind of make most of the things objective rather than subjective so trying to replace the human expertise with help of Technologies and all all what you mentioned right so I started my
• 44:30 - 45:00 career as a data analyst so I understand the value a data can bring and and at the same time we have to ensure that not all all of the data is used for at times if you cannot make sense out of data garbage for you right so to have a data which would make sense and then uh kind of get this data from various bodies to work very closely with other startups who are in similar space or trying to optimize the space and then come up with a full-fledged selection post produces
• 45:00 - 45:30 something which we are currently touching upon so I'm not sure if this would help in terms of like increasing it of course of now since a farmer can choose a commodity he wants to actually throw or a commodity which would actually fetch a better price for the farmer so of course it's going to make a slight difference but what we count as our impact is most probably whether we are able to give uh give any of the farmer or farmer bodies or fpo of market for the produce they have already grown and then they want to liquidate given
• 45:30 - 46:00 the nature of commodity right it's very perishable it would it would be like for sold for nothing if it gets delayed just by two or three days and another question that I have for you that that many there's no there's not a lot of aggregate startups here right there are close to 1500 agritech startups in India as of June this year is data according to action so with such a large number of players in the market how do you how do you look at making and making a meaningful impact
• 46:00 - 46:30 uh honestly speaking the space is so huge right uh if if we actually see the bijak's contribution to this entire value chain in absolute term it would come in decimals right or decimals you would not even be able to read okay because it would have a lot many zeros be before the number but uh given the fact that in India like the agriculture Market is close to 370 billion dollar market and uh contributes almost 19
• 46:30 - 47:00 percent to GDP increase from 17 we at bjek we are just trying to create a platform with which which would exist for decades and which would solve a very basic problem the problem of Market access or Market linkage right so for now a farmer growing potato in Agra may not be able to sell it to Bangalore or even if he's having a buyer in Bangalore he may not know that there is a buyer in karma more needs a drug load of potato to solve this very basic problem and given the fact that it's not a fmcg good
• 47:00 - 47:30 which can wait for a month or be before getting sold right once it's out of here you need to sell it before two three days once it's out of Cold Storage it it needs to be dispatched within 24 hours now time is something which plays a very important role of course given the fact that Logistics and temperature and other challenges are there uh we don't see our impact in absolute terms I mean if if we talk about entire Market I'm not sure whether we'll even able to capture even one of the geography of any of the
• 47:30 - 48:00 commodity because uh I mean uh a few minutes back you were talking about like no unicorn exist in a great experience right uh in aggregate like each of the Commodities as Mark mentioned a couple of days back each of the Commodities have a potential to create unicorn into specific commodity it's just that the moment has very recently started in this space the adoption on Farmer said has increased and it it's it's an
• 48:00 - 48:30 exponential growth right the digital adoption among people we have to wait we have to give some time to the space to the sector for people to adjust right we are trying to change the entire human behavior which has existed for centuries right it's it's not a new business you're trying to change so uh I mean uh if if I tell a couple of cases we have helped the farmer to fetch seven rupees instead of two rupees per kg for his banana which were two truckloads of banana you have to understand for a farmer it's just twice a year he gets an
• 48:30 - 49:00 opportunity to earn bread for his family if you can change the price at that point if you can help in even fetching half a rupees per kg extra right he is going to use your product for Lifetime right they are very loyal and for them it's it's it's not a luxury they are buying out of it it's a necessity for them so VCR our impact as the volume which is being traded through the platform right now it's under trust per kg 100 trucks per day sorry and it's
• 49:00 - 49:30 close to translates close to 2000 tons uh but moving forward we see B Jack as an umbrella for all the post spreading Stripes where most of the other players would be using it to discover counter parties and as of now I think it's it's in itself it's a very big problem to solve [Music] perspective so there are nearly uh 100
• 49:30 - 50:00 aggregate startups and raised close to uh 1.3 billion dollars and across 139 deals uh between Jan 2020 and June 2022 so and there are there is no unicorn yet in the in the academic space like we discussed earlier but there is tremendous interest uh from uh you know uh from your experience in working closely with these startups what are some of the trends in in in in tech tech
• 50:00 - 50:30 advancements and Tech Solutions adoption in this space that is driving the boom of interest and Power in this disruption in this in this whole aggregatech industry right so just like every other sector so agriculture also has been uh disrupted by tech companies in the last few years and in an attempt to transform it from with the introduction of various Technologies and Innovation right in uh logically agritech is also a
• 50:30 - 51:00 relatively young space so it may not be correct to compare it to the other tech-based unicorns you know operating in spaces like which are very few decades ahead already so though uh we are confident that uh agritech will see a few unicorns uh you know uh emerge in the ER to come uh as far as uh Trends are concerned we are seeing a lot of uh you know Artificial Intelligence being used in supporting Farmers uh in overcoming a range of challenges and helping Farmers
• 51:00 - 51:30 with enhanced decision making like a small hold of farmer farming in India May benefit significantly from having access to AI models which that may boost Farm Revenue optimize uh input cost and and de-risk agriculture through quick data intervention some of our customers use data science uh you know and AI to promote sustainable farming practices through precise decisioning you know or to reducing farming cost and of course
• 51:30 - 52:00 increasing uh yields another area uh is the space of computer vision by placing you know sensors in the field and cameras on the farms or in a factory uh for supply chain or Warehouse we can collect information you know related to climate soil quality humidity product quality or even livestock movement as well we can analyze it support Farmers as as they are going about their work
• 52:00 - 52:30 right so one of our customers offer personalized crop advisory to Farmers by generating a crop calendar using big data and analytics taking more than 30 parameters into the account now a farmer can get advice on the exact amount of fertilizers and pesticides along with spray date enabling them to save a cost which is associated to the crop inputs and outputs right uh I'll say that uh kashify using our panel uh you know there leverages our Tech
• 52:30 - 53:00 solutions to provide a more personalized experience to their users as they aim to build a better Network for their farmers uh finally uh we are also noticing uh you know drone startups that have generate a detailed uh map of the farm you know that characterize your uh you know specific agronomic issues including nutrient deficiencies your Pest and Beauty infection in short uh there are lots of interesting Tech Advanced you know advancements and Innovation uh in this
• 53:00 - 53:30 space these other questions we uh I add to all of you this is a super insightful conversation and thank you so much uh everyone paid in the points so um uh thank you everyone thank you nikhil thank you Mark thank you uh for uh thanks madish for for these inputs thank you thanks
• 53:30 - 54:00 thanks everyone