New Delhi, 8 Jan (KNN) The 4th edition of ‘FICCI Agri Startup Summit & Awards’ was held on Friday, where Dr Trilochan Mohapatra, Secretary (DARE) & Director General, ICAR, Govt of India emphasized that nurturing agri innovations is imperative for agricultural development. 

“Innovations played a key role in green and white revolution,” he added. 

He spoke about the huge opportunities to link farmers to market and startups have huge potential in this area, said the press release. 

Dr Mohaptra mentioned that there has to be efficiency, climate resilience and high productivity with quality and we need more and more players to be part of it. 

“Partnership and collaboration are key in today’s world to take agriculture to next level,” he added.

Neelkamal Darbari, MD, Small Farmers’ Agribusiness Consortium (SFAC), Govt of India said that the timing is apt to leverage technologies for the small and marginal farmers. 

“The government has already integrated 1,000 mandis and 1.72 crore farmers are already registered with the portal along with 2 lakh traders. The next step will be to integrate 1,000 more mandis with the portal,” she added.

She further stated that the government is also planning to create platform of platforms. This will link up all the portals available in the country for all activities related to the farming sector. 

Mr T R Kesavan, Chairman, FICCI National Agriculture Committee & Group President, TAFE Ltd said that FICCI Awards for agriculture start-up has emerged as a leading platform for entrepreneurs to showcase their potential. 

He further mentioned that in the last few years, we have seen young entrepreneurs coming up with ideas, innovations and business models to support farmers and help them achieve scale and sustainability.

Vivek Chandra, CEO, Global Branded Business, LT Foods Ltd said that Agri Start-ups will play a crucial role in bringing in the required technology and innovation needed to meet the increasing demand for food as the world population grows.

Ashok Varma, Partner, PwC said that at present, there are more than 700 AgriTech start-ups in India that are developing customised solutions and products to make the agricultural value chain more profitable and remunerative. 

With an impressive inflow of funding, more than 48% of AgriTech CEOs in the country believe that they will have the next AgriTech unicorn within a three-year time frame.

The 4th edition of FICCI Agri Start-up Awards was announced during the event along with the release of FICCI-PwC Knowledge report “Agri start-ups – Fostering collaboration to bring paradigm shifts in Indian agriculture’ and publication on Agri Start-ups by FICCI Task Force members. PwC was the knowledge partner for this event.