I am kickstarting this discussion thread to make an announcement and open the thread for questions.
Jagadeesh Sunkad and I have recently started “Agritech Samvaad” (‘Dialogue’ in Hindi) in Clubhouse to facilitate agritech conversations in Hindi, Tamizh, and other Indic languages. The reasons are obvious - If you want to go deeper in bridging the yawning chasm between Agriculture and Agritech, you need to first switch the language. Last Friday, we kickstarted this Samvaad with participants from the lands of Hindi, Marathi, Kannada chiming in. (If you are excited by the idea of facilitating agritech dialogues in your native tongue from your part of the world, do ping me).
Tomorrow, for the second edition, we have a special guest. Mark Kahn has agreed to dialogue with us on Agritech Samvaad. Although Mark is partially fluent in Hindi, we will do this in English. You can RSVP here. What questions would you like us to ask Mark?
@OmnivoreFund recently announced that they are setting up a $150 million fund to boost rural agritech. How do we build a bridge between Indian Agriculture and Indian Agritech? @OmnivoreFund recently announced that they hired Former NABARD director Dr Harsh Kumar Bhanwala as a senior advisor. This news is interesting because it signals the wave of investments coming in the way of agri fintech. How do we build a bridge between India’s traditional institutional agri credit and agri fintech? How do we deal with the yawning post-harvest infrastructure gap that limits what agritech marketplaces could really achieve when farmers have the right infrastructure to hold their produce and get better price?
These are some of the questions I have on top of my mind. What questions do you think are important that will help us move forward and bring the worlds of Indian Agriculture and Indian Agritech closer? Do chime in. I will acknowledge the best questions and ask Mark when I do the dialogue tomorrow in Clubhouse.
With numerous aggregators operating in India. Agri tech platforms are already reaching the marginal farmers. My questions will be 1) Do the aggregators need policy support / government oversight? 2) What is needed to scale this model to reach pan India? 3) Will the B, C catogery towns & villages require a different approach? 4) What needs to be done for capacity building throughout India. Today there are quite a few individual initiatives, should the government try to ensure this reaches pan India? 5) on farm infrastructure is very poor forcing farmers to sell when prices are low. What needs to be done to build FPO led farm infrastructure?
With numerous aggregators operating in India. Agri tech platforms are already reaching the marginal farmers. My questions will be 1) Do the aggregators need policy support / government oversight? 2) What is needed to scale this model to reach pan India? 3) Will the B, C catogery towns & villages require a different approach? 4) What needs to be done for capacity building throughout India. Today there are quite a few individual initiatives, should the government try to ensure this reaches pan India? 5) on farm infrastructure is very poor forcing farmers to sell when prices are low. What needs to be done to build FPO led farm infrastructure?
Agritech samvaad should be acknowledge.