The whitepaper, rigorously compiled by AIM, NITI Aayog, and UNCDF specialists, provides actionable ways to overcome hurdles faced by Agri-Tech start-ups and assist their growth at the national and international levels. The whitepaper provides the key findings and solutions needed to address agriculture sector difficulties and promote sustainable practices that benefit smallholder farmers in developing nations.
Food security, supply chain inefficiencies, and climate change issues will all be addressed through Agri-Tech advancements. Samuel Praveen Kumar, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, stated in his address to the audience, "Agri-tech startups in India have emerged as a game-changer in the agriculture sector, offering innovative solutions to emerging challenges in agriculture such as climate change, improving productivity, and so on." The AIM-UNCDF Agri-tech Challenge has revealed this market's enormous promise and potential, and we are excited to see what the future holds."
During the launch, Dr. Chintan Vaishnav, Mission Director of the Atal Innovation Mission, stated that "the agriculture sector is critical to food security, supply chain efficiency, and climate change mitigation, and Agri-Tech start-ups in India have provided significant solutions to these challenges." We hope to encourage cross-border engagement, knowledge exchange, and investments to support high-impact Agri-Tech innovations and make agriculture practices more efficient, resilient, and sustainable for smallholder farmers in developing economies through this relationship with UNCDF. We are excited to collaborate with our partners to realize this ambition."
"The learnings from the Agri-tech challenge have been immense and revealed that the market is enormous and has immense potential for global south-south collaboration," said Jaspreet Singh, Global Lead, Financial Health and Innovation, UNCDF, at the launch. Moving forward, we are developing a community network for smallholder farmers that will allow Agri and Agri-tech firms to exchange ideas, explore collaboration, and share information." With over 70% of India's agricultural labour made up of smallholder farmers, agritech start-ups have developed as a solution to farmers' problems.
AIM, in collaboration with UNCDF, seeks to establish a south-south collaboration environment in which Asian and African start-ups can exchange ideas and produce possibilities in their own nations. AIM partners with partner nations such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, and Zambia as an anchor partner of the south-south collaboration programmes. The collaboration focuses on three important concerns in agriculture: low productivity, inadequate risk resilience, and inefficient supply chain management.
The partners have expressed interest in and are at various levels of cross-border involvement with 25 potential Agri-Tech start-ups that aspire to solve important concerns in production, supply chain, risk, and climate change. Emerging-economy Agri-Tech start-ups have effectively supplied digital solutions to numerous agricultural difficulties that the sector has faced in the past. AIM, in collaboration with UNCDF, is committed to promoting high-impact Agri-Tech innovations by establishing an enabling environment that promotes start-up growth and cross-border knowledge transfer.
The Indian start-up sector has the potential to act as a knowledge hub, facilitating market development in less-developed start-up economies around the world. The publication of the whitepaper is a crucial step towards making India a global leader in Agri-Tech innovation and spreading these ideas to Asia and Africa's least developed countries. AIM, NITI Aayog, and UNCDF are committed to working together to achieve this aim of sustainable and equitable agricultural growth.
