The covid 19 pandemic has had a dreadful impact on the Indian agricultural economy although since every cloud has his its silver lining it has acted as stimulant for the growth of e commerce, food delivery and e agricultural markets. The nationwide lockdowns were a consequence for accelerating the growth of agricultural startups in the country. With the help of 4G connectivity and digitization, the agritech startups have built farmer platforms, farmer to consumer markets, business to business ( B2B markets ) . However sadly these changes have been limited to only less than 20 % of the Indian farmers .
Agritech startup : Post Covid Models
In the past years, Agritech has emerged as one of the most significant sectors experiencing increasing growth. The agricultural sectors has presented significant opportunities for technology based companies to replace traditional practices. In the past years the sector has experienced a strong growth with a rapid increase in the amount of institutional funding.
The Covid 19 pandemic imposed a lot of destruction in the traditional brick and mortar practices in agriculture. These restrictions in the form of disruptive logistics, shut down of many Indian agricultural markets, broken supply chains and lack of migratory labour led to economic slowdown in the agricultural sector.
All these factors have contributed to the development of Agri tech startups in the new business models .
Rapid Increase in e agriculture and B2B platforms :
The e commerce marketplaces like Amazon and Flipkart are now a cornerstone for the consumer markets in the Urban areas . The B2B giants like Alibaba and India mart are also vibrant in the modern economy. As a proof of concept for the market, the agritech startups have already started to look upon creation of such online platforms in the post covid world with established companies like DeHaat and Agrostar in this space.
Since the things have turned normal, these platforms have seen a large market for themselves as people realize the benefit of pivoting to the digital mediums and therefore there a huge amount of growth potentials for these business models in the Post Covid world.
Precision Agriculture :
Empirically, India has always had low levels of machinery as compared to the other advanced agricultural economies. While there is some improvement, India still remains as a labour intensive agricultural economy composed of a large number of small and marginal farmers.
The COVID 19 pandemic had a detrimental impact on this structure. There was a mass movement of migratory labour forces back to their hometowns which gave rise to a number of issues. As a consequence of the restricted lockdowns the movements of the agents were restricted therefore there was no reliable source for collecting ground data from these farmers. Pre Covid, there were already some AgriTech startups working on automating the data collection and basic operations.
The AgriTech startups focusing on collection and analysis like CROPIN experienced an increase in demand for monitoring solutions by Banking, Financial Services and Insurance companies while companies like Eruvaka and Fasal experienced an increase in demand for their hardware solutions from the farmers community.
Creation of E-Markets :
The COVID 19 pandemic has created the perfect foundation for accelerating the growth of e market in agriculture. Lack of physical markets policies encouraging digitization and transparent pricing and other an approach toward digitization of supply chain all lay grounds for development of startups operating E markets for agriculture. It is expected to see more number of Agritech startups in the post Covid world that would connect farmers with the buyers through an online medium.
Some organisations such as Ninja Cart ( Connecting farmers to buyers) and Bijak ( Connecting traders to buyers have already gathered pace. The supportive infrastructure for creation of these E markets is also coming up. Companies like Agricx and Intello labs are also helping farmers grade quality thorough visual imagery.
KEYWORDS : AgriStartup, Dost Kisan, Shining Tomorrow Foundation, Agriculture, Post Covid 19, Agriculture, E agricultural markets , Supply chains, Startup, Labour.
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