Agritech companies are seeing a growing interest from investors with over a billion dollars invested last year and a lot more than that expected this year.

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More than 3,000 agritech startups have sprung up in India in the past 5 years but they all put together have a revenue of less than $100 million, which gives many active investors the opportunity to capture the growth potential as pandemic gives thrust to digitisation. Mark Kahn of Omnivore Partners; Krishna Kumar of Cropin Technology and Ajay Kakra of PwC, discussed this on Big Deal.

According to Kakra, the sudden interest in the agritech sector is because of the resilience of the underlying sector.

“Agritech is completely based on agriculture sector, which has been showing a lot of resilience for the last many years. In the COVID-19 times also, the agriculture growth was going good and even the last rabi seasons are very promising while the sowing for kharip is also very good. The tech part is growing good and is showing good growth,” he said.

He sees 25-30 percent growth in the agritech startup segment. “The digital intervention, which they are bringing, that is also adding value of nearly $50-65 billion by 2025,” he added.

Kakra believes there is a lot of promise for scalability, upgrade and monetisation potential.

“We are betting on the future of India,” said Kahn.

The bet has always been that the future of this sector will be built by entrepreneurs developing solutions for India’s 13 crore farmers.

“We are now at an inflection point where I think more and more investors, and more global capital have recognised that there is a massive opportunity, that this is one of the largest addressable markets in India and that people don’t want to miss this chance to transform this sector and the lives of 113 million farmers. We are looking at many decades of growth and opportunity for the largest group in this country,” Kahn explained.

For the entire discussion, watch the accompanying video.