While the global fresh produce market has technology embedded across its value chain, India’s fresh supply chain is yet to see any significant impact. The shift has begun, but the transformation is still in its infancy.Our fresh produce ecosystem remains highly fragmented, with over 85 per cent of fruits and vegetables passing through traditional wholesale markets. As a result, the biggest opportunity lies not in futuristic innovation, but in solving fundamental inefficiencies.Frankly, no layer of the fresh produce supply chain has had any real incentive to invest in pre-cooling, monitoring, traceability, or anything that does not deliver returns by the next day’s auction. Implementing solutions is equally challenging, given half-hectare farms, fragmented cultivation practices, ambient transport, and the absence of anchor distribution centres. These structural constraints explain why technology has barely touched India’s fruit and vegetable supply chain.1st visible shiftThe first visible shift today is in post-harvest management. Some companies have begun investing in scientific sorting, grading, packhouses, ripening chambers, and cold-chain logistics to reduce handling losses and deliver more consistent quality. These investments are critical because a significant share of fruit is still damaged between harvest and consumption due to poor infrastructure rather than low production.Technology is also bringing greater standardisation to quality. Computer vision systems can grade fruit based on size, colour, and external defects far more consistently than manual inspection, which remains the norm in India’s largest mandis.Perhaps the most meaningful change is the emergence of traceability. Consumers can scan the QR codes to see where a fruit was grown, the conditions under which it was harvested, and the safety test reports for each batch. As food safety becomes a growing consumer concern, traceability is likely to evolve from a premium feature into a baseline expectation for organised retail, with technology playing a central role.Limited adoptionAt the farm level, however, technology adoption remains limited. While tools such as weather advisories, digital crop monitoring, and farm management platforms are becoming more accessible, their use is largely confined to organised value chains that work directly with farmers. Scaling these solutions across India’s millions of smallholder farmers will require sustained investment, training, and stronger market linkages, supported by the government.The next phase of India’s fresh produce sector will not be driven by technology alone. Success will depend on combining digital tools with investments in physical infrastructure and better supply chain integration. In India, the greatest value of technology lies not in replacing people, but in reducing wastage, improving food safety, increasing transparency, and building a more efficient farm-to-consumer ecosystem.Some companies have built these layers because no integrated ecosystem existed to plug into. They operate modular farm-level infrastructure, image-based detection systems at packhouses for quality assessment and chemical residue checks, automated ethylene ripening in place of carbide, and our own cold rooms and destination-city distribution centres.The author is Founder and CEO of SuperplumPublished on July 5, 2026