Mr. Aneesh Jain, Founder of Gram Unnati
“The budget is a game changer for the agriculture sector in India. The government has taken bold steps in digitizing the sector by creating an open-source digital public infrastructure and accelerator fund. The push for a green plant programme hits the nail on the head for boosting productivity and profitability, and the increase in credit will provide much-needed financial support to the industry.
The plan for decentralized storage capacity will empower farmers to store their produce and receive fair prices. Overall, this budget will play a crucial role in modernizing and revitalizing the agriculture sector in India, bringing economic growth to rural areas.”
Mr. Navneet Ravikar, Chairman & Managing Director of Leads Connect Services
“The budget marks a major milestone in the growth of the agritech sector. With its emphasis on a tech-driven and knowledge-based path, the budget provides a solid lift for startups in the space. The clear focus on technology gives us the strength to carry our work forward on crop yield estimation and loss assessment using drones, space tech, and mobile interfaces.
The allocation of funds through an accelerator and the three Centres of Excellence for Artificial Intelligence plays a crucial and transformative role. The fund provides the impetus for young entrepreneurs to bring much-needed innovation to rural areas. Meanwhile, the Make AI in India and Make AI Work for India centres will lend themselves to cutting-edge research that improves agricultural practices, efficiency, and scalability.
We have started setting up the Leads Aerospace division with the manufacturing of next-generation drones, IoT, and microsatellites, along with an AI and advanced data analytics lab as the focal point. We also appreciate the ease with which farmers in the dairy value chain and fisheries can obtain credit. However, taking a cue from this, agri-fintechs and the government should jointly work on increasing awareness among the farming community.”
Mr Dhruv Sawhney, COO and Business Head of nurture.farm
“The announcements around the setting up of agriculture accelerator fund, making digital infrastructure for agriculture, computerization of primary agricultural credit societies, setting up of the AI centres etc. are measures towards supporting technology adoption and promoting digitization of agriculture at scale. Empowerment of rural women by lending infrastructure, capital, knowledge, accessibility, supply chain, and marketing support to 81 lac self-groups via the formation of farmer producer enterprise ecosystem is set to improve rural employment, rural income, purchasing power, catalyzing their ability to serve large customers and meet export requirements.
The role of Agritech companies to drive innovations in the insurance space, catalyze rural livelihoods, and move the transition towards sustainable food has been well called out; however support measures to scale these programs can be created. There could have been more measures to devise incentives and investments to specifically educate, adopt practices that solve for climate change in agriculture.”
