Overview:
Food security indicates that every human around the globe has access to sufficient amounts of safe and healthy food. With India expected to be home to an estimated 1.6 billion people by 2050, the country will need to approximately double its food production, considering both the growing population and the demand for higher quality food. This poses a major challenge as food production systems are already facing heat due to climate change, water scarcity, and biodiversity loss. Therefore, the need of the hour is to bring a change in production methods with a focus on sustainability and building resilient food systems. To combat the problem of food waste, meet the rising nutritional demand and improve farmer livelihoods, several entrepreneurs are creating value systems that assure efficiency, product transparency, and traceability across the food value chain.
Global food security will be achieved by improving elements, particularly technology, and this is precisely what many stakeholders in the country are doing. Here’s a look at some of the bold entrepreneurs transforming India’s food value chains by helping improve farm productivity and shelf-life and addressing food security concerns with intelligent tech intervention. These startups are paving the way for India’s equitable and sustainable food system.
Aquaconnect
Aquaconnect is a technology-driven full-stack aquaculture input and outputs platform. The startup works with various stakeholders in the aquaculture value chain to drive responsible production and consumption, improve efficiency, and transparency, and increase value realization through intelligent tech intervention. Through a unique AI-backed advisory solution that provides a Package of Practices (PoP) and an omnichannel marketplace, Aquaconnect has been able to assist over 60,000 aquaculture farmers in areas such as monitoring and tracking culture operations at every stage, improving disease prediction rates and accuracy, boosting production efficiency and producing higher-quality shrimp, thereby increasing profitability.
Aquaconnect is also paving the way for access to formal credit and insurance for aquaculture farmers through AquaCRED-a platform that deploys cutting-edge machine learning algorithms and satellite remote sensing analytics to help banks & insurers build credit profiles, evaluate risk scores, validate and monitor portfolio performance. This Chennai based startup believes that technology can bring transparency which in turn will help understand problems better and strengthen the value chain.
AgNext
AgNext was founded in 2016 with the goal of infusing cutting-edge technologies into the unexplored sector of agribusiness. The AgTech startup is developing technological solutions using Artificial Intelligence that can assess the quality and safety of a range of agri-commodities such as milk, tea, animal feed, spices and grains within a matter of just 30 seconds. The fundamental edifice in this development of AgNext is to promote transparency through effective procurement processes that can assist in sustaining food quality in agribusinesses while also benefiting diverse stakeholders along the route. AgNext is determined to tackle significant problems in agriculture-related to quality, safety, and traceability, covering the full food value chain. The growing demand for these technology interventions is undeniably making the lives of enormous agri-stakeholders easier, not only in India but across the globe.
DeHaat
DeHaat is one of the fastest-growing start-ups in the Agri tech sector, providing end-to-end solutions and services to the farming community in India. They are building AI-enabled solutions that are poised to revolutionize the farm sector’s supply chain and production efficiency.
Knowing your soil is one significant practice that they focus on, as they believe that the soil is where it all starts. Its nutrient content and chemical composition define how fertile the soil is and what level of plant life it can support and sustain consistently.
With their help, the farmers get the soil test done at their testing labs or bring in their existing soil health cards. Soil composition data points provide foundations for selecting the right Agri input (seed/fertilizer) and generating advanced analytics, e.g., yield predictions and Personalized Advisory. With this practice, the startup aims to ensure that the soil on which the crop is growing is of good quality to yield a better standard of product for the consumers as well as farmers.
Intello Labs
Intello Labs was founded in 2016. Its digital products include Intello Track, Intello Sort, Intello Pack, and Intello Deep, which use computer vision and deep learning to assist farmers, retailers, and exporters in determining the quality of their fruits and vegetables. Intello Labs has developed digital solutions that use artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities such as computer vision and deep learning to monitor and grade the quality of fruits and vegetables. Across the F&V (fruits and vegetables) value chain, the company wants to be the de-facto quality platform for trade, procurement, grading, pricing, traceability, and marketing.
Their flagship product, Intello Track, helps gain greater control over quality processes, driving accuracy, consistency, & collaboration & Intello ShelfEye helps automate dark stores, online fresh produce, and meal-kit quality processes with AI to cut superfluous costs, enhance operations, and delight customers.
Conclusion:
Startups like these are setting an example of how technology is helping solve the problems prevailing in our food value chain. These models are not only helping the end consumers but also improving farmers’ livelihoods.