The Digital Agriculture Mission, with an outlay of ₹2,817 crore, is building digital infrastructure around farmer identities, crop data and decision support.
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Indian agriculture has never lacked problems for technology to solve. What we underestimated was how difficult it is to build large, sustainable businesses around those problems.The funding cycle tells part of the story. Indian agritech startups raised around $33 million in 2015, rising to $528.4 million by FY2021, according to Omnivore. By 2025, funding had fallen to around $202 million, according to Inc42. Yet the underlying agricultural economy continued to grow, with agriculture, livestock, forestry and fishing GVA increasing roughly 2.5x between FY2015-16 and FY2024-25.The opportunity did not disappear. Our expectations changed.What agriculture taught usMuch of the first wave of agritech was built around disintermediation. The assumption was that technology could remove the layers between farmers and customers and make the value chain more efficient. This drove investment into agri-commerce, market linkages, farm advisory and direct-to-farmer models.But agriculture taught us that an intermediary is often more than an intermediary. They may aggregate produce, provide credit and working capital, assess quality, manage logistics and maintain relationships. Removing that layer without replacing these functions does not automatically create a better system.We also expected agritech to scale like consumer internet or SaaS. It doesn’t. Farmer trust takes time. Procurement networks take time. Physical infrastructure takes time. Commodity cycles can quickly change the economics.Agriculture is a slow burner. But slow does not mean small.From replacing the ecosystem to improving itThe next phase of agritech investing, therefore, should be less about replacing the ecosystem and more about making it work better.The more interesting businesses may be those that solve specific, high-value problems while combining technology with on-ground execution. Technology can make procurement more efficient without replacing procurement networks. Better data can improve credit, insurance and quality assessment. Traceability can help Indian producers access global markets. Better inventory visibility can improve storage and working capital.These businesses may look narrower than an end-to-end agricultural platform, but their advantages can compound through data, relationships, transaction volumes and infrastructure.This also expands the opportunity beyond the traditional farmer-facing app. Procurement, storage, financing, exports, processing, waste and supply chains remain fragmented. The opportunity is to make these parts of agriculture work better.Policy could accelerate the shiftThe Digital Agriculture Mission, with an outlay of ₹2,817 crore, is building digital infrastructure around farmer identities, crop data and decision support. For investors, the more interesting question is what businesses become possible because this infrastructure exists.Better data could improve lending and insurance underwriting, while common digital rails could allow private companies to build services without recreating the underlying infrastructure.What the next cycle will rewardThe next funding cycle will be more selective, but that may be healthy. Investors will look beyond user growth and funding milestones towards retention, revenue quality, unit economics, capital efficiency and defensibility.The question is no longer simply how large the agricultural market is. It is which problem can be solved well enough, and patiently enough, to build a durable business around it.Agtech has not become a smaller opportunity. We have simply become more realistic about what it takes to build in agriculture; less disruption for its own sake, and more patience, execution and depth.The author is Partner & CFO, Aeravti VenturesPublished on September 5, 2026
