{Startup watch: Unnati} On a mission to turn farmers into farm entrepreneurs

This NABARD venture capital-backed AgTech startup offers end-to-end support for farmers across the country.

With more than 450 startups, India’s AgTech market is valued at a whopping US$24.1 billion and is continuing to grow at a breakneck pace even amid the pandemic. In fact, in 2020, AgTech startups witnessed over US$300 million investments, and the industry has been projected to grow at a CAGR of 32% from FY20 to FY25.

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Still, the sector has been relatively slow in the adoption of technology and digitisation as opposed to other industries such as finance and education.

In the past few years, several AgTech startups have emerged to attempt at revolutionising the sector with increased digitisation and incorporation of cutting-edge technology.

Underlining its commitment to creating a digital agri-ecosystem in India to upgrade the lives of farmers, Unnati, a FinTech-driven agriculture ecosystem has joined hands with Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) to empower farmers with tech-led business solutions by enhancing their economic strengths and market linkages to improve their income.

The brand intends to support 3,000+ FPOs that impact 15 lakh farmers and plans to increase this number to 10,000+ FPOs that will uplift the lives of 1 crore farmers by FY24.

The Tech Panda spoke to Amit Sinha, Co-Founder of Unnati about how they are supporting Indian farmers through technology.

Unnati’s technological expertise and business intelligence platform acts as a one-stop solution for retailers/small traders, which helps them in streamlining business processes, provides better payment methods, and supply chain management of inputs as per the understanding of demand

“Agri input retailers/small traders play a central role in the agricultural value chain by helping farmers with products and services needed to grow their crops and business. These include seeds, pesticides, fertilisers, herbicides, nutrients, equipment, and technology,” he explains.

“Unnati’s technological expertise and business intelligence platform acts as a one-stop solution for retailers/small traders, which helps them in streamlining business processes, provides better payment methods, and supply chain management of inputs as per the understanding of demand,” he adds.

What They Do

Unnati is digitising the agriculture sector by providing farmers with a platform that helps them not only with input purchases and output linkages, but also with credit services, and access to farm and crop knowledge, along with predictive diagnostics tools.

“Unnati has developed an end-to-end ‘tech backbone’ for all stakeholders in the agri trade. It bundles everything from pre-harvest guidance to post-harvest services to working credit for farmers under a unified platform,” says Sinha.

Unnati has developed an end-to-end ‘tech backbone’ for all stakeholders in the agri trade

The startup’s transaction platform includes agri-input, farm output, and credit line services. It’s AI platform provides tech enabled insights on agronomy, while its knowledge platform acts as a knowledge bank for crops and products offered.

Inspiration & Origin

Both Sinha and his Co-founder Ashok Prasad witnessed first-hand the issues faced by the rural community, including availability of high-quality products, insights on market requirement and market linkages, lack of technological involvement in practices, and how even local business owners were facing challenges in managing their operation.

Sinha identifies the informal and unorganised nature of agriculture as a key issue. He also explains that the challenges faced by farmers include ‘input purchases (right time, quantity, and quality), access to credit, output linkages, and access to farm knowledge.’

Other problems are a lack of digitisation as well as unpredictable climate changes and lack of access to information and forecasts to mitigate these.

Growth Story

Unnati’s platform is addressing 360 degree problems faced by farmers related to quality input, market access, and boosting overall income through a comprehensive suite of features.

“We are digitising the entire ecosystem, providing high quality inputs, output linkages, financial services, including a credit line for farmers and partners, and co-branded card for farmers, and agro-advisory all in one platform,” Sinha says proudly.

The startup is on a mission to turn farmers into farm entrepreneurs and has taken initiatives such as the Digital Integrated Card, a brand partnership with Paytm, which has launched a unique digitally integrated card to help improve farmers’ income.

We are digitising the entire ecosystem, providing high quality inputs, output linkages, financial services, including a credit line for farmers and partners, and co-branded card for farmers, and agro-advisory all in one platform

Through their partnership with Satyukt, the brand aims to offer innovative farming solutions using satellite technology. Unnati also introduces Pay Later Options for farmers.

The startup has grown to over 11000 uStores to help farmers. The uStore network of over 11000 digitally enabled retail points is one of the largest networks in India. They reach out to over 4 million farmers throughout the main crop sectors such as sugarcane, maize, paddy, wheat, cotton, mustard, and pulses in the states of UP, Bihar, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, MP, and Maharashtra.

Unnati has been eminently successful in reaching and impacting over 300k farmers’ lives with a network of 20k+ uStore. The company has witnessed a magnificent 16x growth in September vs. last year.

Future Plans

Unnati plans to continue to expand geographically by spreading through more districts in states such as UP, Bihar, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Haryana, and Punjab, by increasing its current uStore network of 17,000.

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“We plan to keep enhancing our intelligent platforms in order to address and resolve the issues faced by farmers in agronomy, and we strive to provide farmers with relevant information that could help them streamline their business and increase profitability. We are targeting expansion of our uStore network to 1 lakh stores in the near future,” Sinha says.