EEKI FOODS is doing the unthinkable in water-starved, sun-scorched Rajasthan. It is growing tomatoes in water. The Kota-based startup has developed hydroponic growth chambers that use 80% less water than traditional farming but deliver four times the yield. The plants are nurtured in a nutrient-rich water solution within an IoT-controlled chamber. Eeki is already expanding into the Middle East.

“It’s an amazingly frugal, made-in-India technology using a patented polymer chamber. It’s massively scalable, and 150 acres are already under management,” says Anjali Bansal, founding partner of Avaana Climate and Sustainability Fund, which supports Eeki. Bansal calls it the future of food.

In neighbouring Delhi-NCR, Prasanna Rao wanted to make an impact in agribusiness when he co-founded arya.ag 13 years ago. A former commodity finance expert, Rao realised within a year that algorithms alone can’t protect farmers from price risk. “It was humbling to realise that financing and price risk management cannot be done without physical control over the goods that farmers could hold. You need a model built around traditional mechanisms like warehouses or storage-based financing. Storage must be the foundation,” he says.

In its early years, arya.ag set up an NBFC — Aryadhan — to help farmers avoid distress sales. By 2021, it had connected them to buyers beyond local mandis. With each tweak the startup brought in, the value for the customer went up. “Our profits have gone up, the level of customer adoption has gone up, and the level of customer retention has gone up,” Rao says. Today, arya.ag claims to be India’s largest grain commerce platform, managing grains worth $3 billion across 21 states and facilitating ₹11,215 crore ($1.3 billion) in finance annually. “We’re profitable now. By next year, we aim for ₹1,000 crore in revenue and ₹200 crore PAT. We’ll be IPO-ready by mid-next year,” Rao says.

He’s part of a new wave of entrepreneurs building tech-enabled platforms to make Indian agriculture more predictable, productive, and profitable. “Agri-startups are witnessing a democratisation of entrepreneurship. It’s where farmer wisdom meets youth’s enthusiasm and tech prowess,” says Vineet Rai, founder, Aavishkaar Capital, a venture capital firm that focusses on agritech startups.

Full-stack solutions provider Agrostar, online marketplace DeHaat, and AI-based agritech startup Cropin are on Rai’s list of IPO probables. “There are a handful of others. This will be the first time India’s home-grown startups tap into the equity market,” Rai says. He believes IPOs will usher in a new era in agritech in the next 12-24 months. The ecosystem might be beginning to discover that the agritech opportunity is much bigger and global than perceived so far.

The scope

Of the 10 thematic pavilions at April’s Startup Mahakumbh in New Delhi, agritech had the highest number of exhibitors — 101. From livestock and aquaculture to precision farming and AI-led crop monitoring, startups demonstrated their ability to solve specific problems of Indian farmers.

According to a report by 1Lattice and the Indian Venture & Alternate Capital Association (IVCA), the sector must overcome challenges like fragmented landholdings, low productivity, soil degradation, water stress, climate change, and labour costs. Yet agriculture grew 5% annually between 2016-17 and 2022-23 — a first since Independence.

India's food grain production is projected to hit 328.85 million metric tonne (MMT), oilseeds 39.59 MMT, and horticulture 352.23 MMT, according to 2023-24 estimates. Rising yields have boosted food security and exports to $50.2 billion, notes the draft National Policy Framework on Agricultural Marketing.

India’s agritech market, comprising ground agriculture, livestock, and fisheries, is worth ₹30 lakh crore and is expected to touch ₹38 lakh crore by FY30. However, adoption remains patchy, with most uptake either crop-specific or regional. Large agrochemical and FMCG firms have engaged farmers for years — startups are the latest addition.

Fresh playbooks

When Syed Junaid Altaf joined his Jammu-based family business, FIL Industries, as executive director in 2013, the company was already a leader in agrochemical manufacturing. It owned the country’s largest apple concentration plant, one of the biggest cold storage facilities for apples, and several FMCG fruit juice and bottled water brands. Altaf chose to focus on horticulture, particularly apples. “Apple is a multibillion-dollar industry. Our (India’s) average yield is 9 tonnes per hectare versus Europe’s 45 tonnes. China’s average is north of 30 tonnes, while the U.S.’s is above 40 tonnes. They grew gene pools — we didn’t,” he says.

FIL is working to change that. With new high-yield, climate-resilient varieties, Altaf believes India can triple production and transform its $3.5-billion (₹30,250 crore) apple sector into a $15-billion (₹1.3 lakh crore) market. He breaks down the math: “Our land under apple cultivation is 240,000 hectares. On average, another 6,000-8,000 hectares will be added in three to four states each year… If we increase the yield by only 25 tonnes per hectare, we will triple our production. From today’s production of 2.4 million tonnes of apples, we will become the second largest producer.” Currently, China leads the list of apple-producing nations, while India is ranked fifth.

Recently, the Centre picked FIL to build a pilot cluster of 60,000 hectares in Shopian, Jammu and Kashmir, for an end-to-end apple farming ecosystem. From pre-production biotech to developing gene pools and new varieties, the plan is to provide holistic support to apple farmers in nutritional management, processing, marketing, and cold chain.

It has also introduced parametric insurance to protect farmers from weather shocks.

Altaf hopes all of these will lead to an apple and horticulture revolution in India. “You need IoT and tech, but you also need old-school agri-wisdom to connect with farmers,” he says.

Down South, nestled in the blue-hued Nilgiris, Lawrencedale Agro Processing India Pvt. Ltd (Leaf) is working with tribal and smallholder farmers to adopt climate-resilient farming. Leveraging the region’s “natural greenhouse,” Leaf’s precision farming boosts yields by 30%.

Founder and CEO Palat Vijayaraghavan says Leaf has partnered with more than 1.4 million farmers, creating a robust ecosystem that enhances farmer incomes, thus ensuring long-term rural resilience. Its Leaf Farmer Network (LFN), developed with Mastercard, links farmers and 500 farmer producer organisations (FPOs) to markets, credit, and services. Farmers use smart cards and digital payment gateways to access formal credit and avoid debt traps. Using the offline-enabled smart cards and digital payment gateways, Leaf is on a mission to dismantle the informal credit system that has historically trapped farmers in cycles of debt, Vijayaraghavan says. Leaf is now eyeing a $25 million Series E round from marquee investors to deepen its impact and scale infrastructure.

There are other notable startups such as Weather Risk Management Services (advisory), Vertical Agroscience (input solutions), Gramophone (digital agri-input chain), Ergos (digital grain bank), Jai Kisan (agri-finance), Ninjacart (logistics), and Kamatan (marketing) in the sector.

Interestingly, startup registrations peaked in 2020 at 572 but declined to 94 in 2024, indicating a shift from short-term opportunism to long-term strategy. In terms of funding, the upstream stages — inputs, tech, and data — attract the most capital.

The government remains a top player in the space. In FY24, at ₹7.3 lakh crore, it was the highest investor in terms of gross fixed capital formation in agriculture and allied sectors, while private investors pumped in `1.1 lakh crore.

Agritech’s UPI moment?

India aspires to move from being a historically inefficient producer to a global food powerhouse. One key enabler in this journey will be the Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) in agriculture, or Agri Stack, which links farmer IDs to land and crop data. As of December 17, 2024, more than 5.4 million farmer IDs had been created.

The government has also completed the Digital Crop Survey in 436 districts during last year’s kharif season and integrated the Agri Stack with the Jan Samarth and Kisan Rin credit portals in pilot states such as Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra. This integration allows issuing Jan Samarth-based Kisan Credit Cards.

Experts believe Agri Stack could be agritech’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI). “We’re all trying to replicate Agri Stack with field-level data. If shared, we could build on it instantly,” arya.ag’s Rao says. Convergence is the need of the hour.

The government has also introduced a series of technology-backed initiatives such as the National Pest Surveillance System; ‘Namo Drone Didi’ for women Self-Help Groups (SHGs); the National Agriculture Innovation Fund for agri-based startups; and Kisan e-Mitra, an AI-powered chatbot to assist farmers with responses to queries about the PM Kisan Samman Nidhi scheme. With an outlay of ₹1,261 crore between FY24 and FY26, the ‘Namo Drone Didi’ aims to equip 15,000 select women SHGs with drones for providing rental services to farmers for agricultural purposes.

The National Pest Surveillance System tackles the loss of produce due to climate change, utilises AI and machine learning to detect pest infestation in crop issues, enabling timely intervention. Currently, Kisan e-Mitra handles over 20,000 queries per day. So far, more than 9.2 million queries have been answered.

Several government-funded research programmes are also underway to raise agricultural productivity and develop climate-resilient varieties in partnership with agricultural universities, NGOs, and players from the private sector.

New risk variable

While bridging traditional wisdom with tech prowess can solve a lot of problems, there are new challenges, like climate change and unpredictable weather patterns. With 2024 declared the hottest year and the last decade the warmest 10 years ever recorded, India is no exception to these harsh changes.

“Severe heat wave conditions have arrived unusually early this year during March (in 2025), sweeping through eastern and western India, with temperatures exceeding 40°C in multiple regions. Last year, the first severe heatwave conditions were recorded only in early April,” notes Ashok Gulati, distinguished professor at the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), and his co-authors in the report titled ‘Low Carbon Footprint Agriculture’. The report, which delves into state-wise greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, recommends a transition to low-carbon footprint agriculture by enabling private investment in climate finance, solarisation, and increased R&D for sustainable and climate-resilient agriculture. Ecosystem integration is only the beginning of a journey in this direction.

From Eeki Foods’ soil-less farming to AI-backed drones that decide where to spray on a plant for crop protection, the agritech revolution is gathering pace by integrating traditional wisdom with new-age tech to build resilience. India can truly be called a global food supplier only when its farmers receive globally competitive prices, and every product is traceable back to the farmland, or even to the individual tree or plant. The integration of the ecosystem is the beginning of a journey in that direction.

As Bill Gates noted ahead of his March visit to India: “India is a place where big challenges meet even bigger ambitions, and where innovation is transforming lives at an incredible scale.” And nowhere is this transformation more critical — or more promising — than in agriculture.