Decoding Agricultural Technology (Agritech) with Parmesh Shah

Technology has the potential to revolutionise Indian agriculture. There are innovations in seed and bioengineering platforms, use of robots and AI and blockchain that are enhancing efficiency and transparency in the sector. India's agritech industry comprises over 1300 companies and is projected to reach over ₹1 trillion by 2025. The recent 2023-24 budget allocated INR 450 crores to the Digital Agriculture Mission and INR 600 crores for technology driven agriculture promotion.

However, despite these promising tailwinds, the low adoption of technology by farmers remains a major challenge, and agritech penetration in India remains abysmally low at around 1%. In today's episode of Decoding Impact, we try to understand the potential of a platform-based approach for agritech, the importance of directing the right capital to address the right issues, and how we can take a systems approach to identify key enablers for the successful scale up of agritech.

Our guest for this episode is Mr. Parmesh Shah, the Global Lead for Data, Digital Agriculture and Innovation at the Agriculture and Food Global Practice of the World Bank. Mr. Shah is currently managing a global programme on scaling up data-driven digital agriculture, involving data platforms and establishing ecosystems for innovation, entrepreneurship and incubation across 38 countries.

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• Host: Rathish Balakrishnan | ⁠Linkedin | Twitter
• Guest: Parmesh Shah | Linkedin | Twitter
• Producer: Meenakshi Iyer
• Audio Engineer & Editor: Abhilash Raikar
• Designer: Usha Sondhi Kundu

Content Sections:

• 0:00 - Decoding Impact Introduction0:48 - Introduction to topic and guest02:37 - The current agri tech landscape
• 05:58 - Defining agtech solutions & tech
• 10:03 - Successful solution categories
• 13:53 - The need for physical plus digital infrastructure
• 23:41 - 5 key principles
• 25:46 - Systemic challenges to agtech adoption
• 33:49 - Understanding platforms and agri tech
• 42:20 - Summarising the platform "cake" layers
• 43:35 - Different types of capital
• 49:22 - Building a platform-based approach
• 57:25 - Challenges for big business and the State
• 01:04:10 - Role of Philanthropy
• 01:07:20 - Summary and thanks