New Delhi, Aug 13 (KNN) Growing at the rate of 25% year on year, India currently hosts more than 450 start-ups in the Agritech sector, according to National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) report.

In its report titled, ‘Agritech in India –Emerging Trends in 2019’, NASSCOM said the Agritech sector in India has witnessed some of the global and sector focused funds directly investing in Agritech startups.

According to the report, as of June 2019, the sector has received more than USD 248 mn funding, a massive growth of 300% as compared to the previous year. With the recent rise in funding, 48% Agritech CEOs, as per the NASSCOM Agritech CEO survey, believe to have the next Agritech unicorn in coming 3 years.

Commenting on this, President of NASSCOM, Debjani Ghosh said, “India's agriculture sector is advancing steadily towards its digital transformation and the start-up ecosystem is playing a critical role here, bringing innovation and disruption in much-needed areas.”

Adoption of technology in agriculture has always needed a structured institutional focus and technology firms are trying to break into the agricultural landscape using newer business models. The findings of the report area testimony to the potential of the Agritech industry and the opportunities that India presents in the agriculture and farming landscape, she added.

With more and more local farmers accepting the innovative start-up solutions, there has been a considerable shift witnessed from B2C to B2B start-ups. Corporate and investors are playing a vital role in supporting this with over USD 200 mn investment in B2B start-ups in the past 18 months, making it as a key revenue generating segments in the overall Agritech sector, said NASSCOM.

This has enabled creating better access to market, faster technology adoption and bring domain specific product development support to the industry.

Indian companies are increasingly looking at global markets to expand with focus on regions like South East Asia, Europe, Africa and South America. According to the report in the last 5 years, more than5 global Agritech companies have ventured in India, as compared to more than 25 Indian Agritech companies with global presence, it added.

New emerging areas like market linkage, digital agriculture, and better access to inputs and financing are attracting large traction.

Realizing the vision of make in India, for the world, it is estimated that by 2020 the Agritech sector to be at the center-stage of innovation and will lead India's journey towards overall transformation, said NASSCOM in its report.

Therefore, to achieve this goal, it is imperative that the ecosystem needs to focus towards driving innovation, data collaboration, easy working capital and providing digital infrastructure to enable real time access to farmers across the country, it added.

NASSCOM said it will continue its drive towards catalysing emerging tech start-ups, and work with the ecosystem to build category leaders and support start-ups to create not only for India but also scale up and build for the world.