 Welcome everyone to the virtual conference by Entrepreneur India under our resilient series. Here we talk to business stakeholders who are striving to find out ways to fight the COVID pandemic and the future ahead. I am Saurav Kumar, editor of Special Projects Entrepreneur India, your moderator for the session. Well, the COVID-19 crisis has wrecked all economies across the globe, the most advanced nations and businesses have not been spared. And as an extended lockdown due to the coronavirus outbreak has kept people and businesses from resuming regular activity and the relaxation has been partial. There has been a reverse flow of migrant laborers to their native places. Well, while the government has announced many schemes to support the income of these laborers such as allocating additional funds under the MG Narega scheme. These laborers are likely to fall back on agriculture. So these interrelated events are likely to put pressure on the country's farmland. That's what I believe. Now this crisis, while being a deterrent to many businesses, has turned the focus on the agricultural infrastructure of the country, including the that of the government. And you know, here is where the aggregate players have an important role to play. So before we start the session today, I'll just lay the ground rules for our attendees today. The panel session will go on for 45 minutes and that will be followed by a Q&A session for the next 15 minutes. If you have any questions during the course of the discussion, you can post them through the Q&A option. Our Facebook audience can post their questions in the comment section. We'll take up the questions post the panel discussion. Let me now introduce and welcome the fantastic panel for the day. I have with me today, Mr. Karthik Jayaraman, co-founder and CEO, Waykul. Mr. Kunal Prashar, co-founder and CEO crop in. Mr. Milan Sharma, co-founder and CEO in Telolab. Mr. Prasanna Rao, managing director, Arya Collateral Warehousing. And Mr. Sandeep Singhal, co-founder and managing director, Nexus Venture Partner. So, gentlemen, just to start with the first question, as I mentioned in my opening remarks that, you know, a lot of laborers have gone back and, you know, the first place, of course, the government has allocated additional funds for MG Narega and there are other things, but they are going to fall back on agriculture, at least for now. So, I'm sure that this opens up a lot of opportunity for both, you know, the farmers and also the stakeholders around it. So, to just start with, I will, I will want to know from Prasanna if I can start with you that, you know, what kind of opportunities really this kind of a situation opens up for aggregate players? You know, I think going back to your point of having, you know, a lot of migrants going back to their villages, my thought is that, you know, it opens up challenges as well as opportunities. Challenges, certainly, we know, you know, a lot of pressure on agriculture and the others, but opportunities in terms of how do we use this strength for the benefit of the operations which are going on at the ground level? For example, in our work in the post harvest side, specifically in smaller agriculture markets, over the last two months, we've seen many warehouses, many markets not being able to operate because of lack of labor. Now, these are smaller markets which also have been a source of agricultural labor and people are coming back to some of these markets. Now, is there a way in which this could be matched and some of these strengths that these returning migrants could bring in, could be used in these circumstances? The other thing that we've seen is there is a mushrooming of farmer producer organizations across the country, both government induced as well as need based. Now, they have had a shortage of skilled manpower at different levels, including labor to quality assessment to a lot of other things, which is where we see. And in one of the studies that we ourselves have done, we've seen that there are a few who are trying to dip into that available talent to make sure that their operations are for the streamline. Now, apart from this, one other thing that I feel what Agritex could do and can certainly do in this circumstance is that if there is a larger need for formalization of the distributed agriculture value chains. And that is what COVID has really thrown open to the whole world. And that is where the whole point has been that you, so that is where the whole point has been that as Agritex players, you try and formalize the whole value chain. And whether it is in terms of visibility of different transactions, if you type that up with the relaxations and regulations that is coming up. There's a huge difference that Agritex could make. Similarly, the other piece that we feel is that there are Agritex doing different parts of these activities across the value chain. I see a huge potential of Agritex working together, somebody working on the pre harvest side tying up with the post harvest player that connects to the market. Somebody like Intelo that really brings in transparency on quality being tied up with a market platform with a financing platform so that the whole process could be further streamlined. So it opens up a huge opportunity for individual startups to work standalone but also to see how we could all work together to build that whole formalization through the chain. I think that's where the greatest opportunity lies. Of course, Milan, if I can come to you mentioned that formalization and different like something what we call is the farm to fork sort of if people can come together and give solutions. Is that what you also think will be opportunity right now that comes up? Right, so let's first understand what crisis is giving to what opportunity. I'll just touch upon the crisis and then address what opportunity it is giving. It was one of the stress test of the supply chain on last two months from figuring out how seamlessly produce can travel from farm to hope. And there are, as you also pointed out, there were challenges where certain processes which were labor heavy and shortage of labor. There's a pressure and innovative ways to make them transparent that is what second, the discovery of produce is also being to an extent going towards a direction. And digitally discovery of produce can be made. And it's important to understand because earlier on the current system was more physical in nature. Now, since limited movement was there, the discovery of digital discovery of produce, it gave a push to that. And now coming addressing to the question this crisis gave a very good path to the opportunity, which is a automating the process across the supply chain and also connecting different dots like Prasanna also said there is a very good opportunity for different players who are probably working in isolation and now in a very agile way figuring out how can they address the problems and the crisis in a more collaborative way. So this is giving a very good pace, a very good direction for automation and digital trade to enable farm to hope in a more effective way. So I'll come to you straight away. So, you know, we just heard Prasanna and Milan saying that, you know, collaboration is the way that can really reap the benefits of the opportunities. And we have seen in some other vertical slice, you know, in education, like education and gaming, some of the players are coming together to offer newer products or at least start talking so that. So do you, do you think that this is the time when architect players who are in one certain play should connect with the other and will that be the value proposition that you see in. This is for me. Okay, so, you know, from what we are seeing broadly across the ecosystem, there is more collaboration that is happening on the agri tech side I don't know if it is planned, it is happening I think organically, because the underlying customers are effectively the same. So if you look at what Prasanna mentioned and what Milan also mentioned, Prasanna is a, you know, is a warehousing solution is a logistic solution and so on. Milan is not going to provide the tracks Prasanna is going to provide the tracks Prasanna is the one who's a procurement person in the Monday, but Milan's technology in terms of quality and saying is what will be used to make this more seamless. Right, so I think by default you'll see the two of them working together to drive drive change and the there is obviously stress in the market right now you know processors have struggled over the last two three years we've seen bankruptcies on the processing side and so on but broadly there is you know the farmer is still producing the crop rubby crop is supposed to have been very good. I think Prasanna made the point that it has been challenging in the Mondays because of labor to have the offtake. So whatever can be done to reduce that friction is going to be something that we are actually seeing across the board so from an investor perspective, what you know what you mentioned about other industries so I think there's a broader trend that I would sort of want to outline here and that has to do with digitization. So, you know, what COVID has done in some ways is this, you know, in the, in the white collar side you obviously have this work from home concept, obviously that work from home concept and we take into Agri. Agri is fundamentally a physical is a physical process. So in that scenario, the shift is really the digitization shift that is much more availability of information today, and the number of companies that we see that are working on Agri extension are working with farmers has gone up significantly. And on the other hand, on the procurement side, there is a significant requirement for the procurers to connect with the farmers. It improves their ability to do just in time procurement, it reduces the working capital needs and so on. So what, you know, Karthik may be doing over Kunal is doing with Cropin. So one of our portfolio companies, Sumitar, is actually a client of Cropin. And we are working with over 150,000 farmers using their platform and it has made a huge difference in our ability to keep track of what the farmer is producing when to when to procure and so on. I think there is, so there is, there's collaboration happening, just because more and more tools are becoming available. So, Karthik, I'll come to you and then to Kunal. So now that we've heard that, you know, collaboration is happening. And, you know, so I'll go back to my first question to ask you that, you know, for you, who is making the food available, the produce available to the consumer. So how do you see this opportunity where, you know, a lot of relaxation has come in and the whole focus of the, you know, the government is also towards agriculture because we realize that, you know, in fact, I'll just give you an example that yesterday Mahindra sales came in and you know, their domestic sales are at par with what it was in May last year, for this May, tractor sales domestic, it's not exposed, the domestic sales. So, you know, it shows that there is need there and there is opportunity lying there. Absolutely. I think what COVID served as a trigger for a set of reforms, which, while we're waiting for the final text to be out, which if executed, you know, as well as it was described, there are at least three major opportunities that come out with three different opportunity horizons. The first of course is the creation of multiple supply chain options for the farmer to liquidate their produce. Here the most efficient player will win. APMC can be treated as a block. It's a block which handles the produce and a product in a certain way. There will be multiple other such parallel players coming in. The only difference is now there is a level playing field. So the best operator will win. We'd like to believe that the AgriTech players will be the best operators. The APMC supply chain may believe otherwise. We'll figure out who wins. There are a few characteristics that Sandeep described which are critical over here. I think there will be some amount of digital interfacing. This is a digital business. There will be a digital interfacing but a physical logistics backbone to it. So the efficiency will be determined by the smoothest way to engage with the farmers as well as the best transportation problem solver. The guys who have figured out the entire logistics most efficiently. What I mean by smoothest interfaces, you know, we all like apps. We build a lot of apps. Frankly, in the last two months, most of our business has happened on WhatsApp and sometimes on Twitter. So that is the interface that the farmers have found easy to understand. And therefore, you know, we've got to learn that, you know, build to build such interfaces. And of course, logistics, how well you handle your tracking networks makes a very big difference. This is Horizon 1. Horizon 2 is even more interesting and it connects back to the point that you made about people going back to the villages. One must remember that these folks are skilled as well because they've been working in factories elsewhere and so on. There's an opening that's created by some of the new benefits that are provided for village-level entrepreneurs. The simplest thing is storage, post-harvest storage. More and more people are realizing that micro-storages make sense. Informally, this already happens for products like onion and garlic. These will get formalized, maybe for other crops as well. The next is value addition. For example, we're doing a small project where we're actually getting village-level entrepreneurs to convert raw tamarind to processed tamarind. So a lot of this value addition can shift to the villages and we move the finished product which is more efficient again. So this we see as a Horizon 2 development. It's Horizon 2 because the necessary ecosystem will take some time to build. The third is actually triggered by the contract farming law. The challenge in India is we don't have consolidated buyers at that level that exists in the West. But we believe that over time, consolidated buying, perhaps for exports, will emerge. That will, in turn, trigger a whole host of services which are contract farming services which an agri-tech player can do. Which will go all the way to agri-extension, for example, in partnership with crop and quality control in partnership with Intel. The supply chain orchestration by people like us and feed into large global buyers. We believe that this ecosystem will come up in Horizon 3. So we see three waves of potential transformation that could benefit the agricultural supply chain. Thank you, Karthik. Kunal, if I can come to you and have your views on the same thing. What are the opportunities that it opens up in terms of agri-tech? Especially now that we heard others also saying that there is collaboration going to happen. Silo's are going to be broken down. And other kind of efficiency is the key where people who are efficient will be the one who will be the winner. So what's your thought on that? I think it's a wonderful question to start off with. First of all, the entire COVID period we have seen the real need of going digital. The entire infrastructure which was carrying the information within themselves. The extension field officers, the agents, the supply chain aggregators and all of them have vanished. Which means now the value chain players which are the businesses interacting directly with these players are not having information about what is happening in the ground level. And that has resulted in the massive losses at the field itself during the particular rabbi season. So I think that has led to a lot of intervention and a lot of understanding from the government that these technology, a digital framework of knowing what is growing, where it is growing, who is the farmer is very, very critical for them. Once you know that asset of the farmer that know where is, what is happening, then all of the value chains can come and interact on that. A bank can come and finance a particular farmer because he knows that what crop is growing. And insurance can come and he can ensure that particular crop. You can have then input supplies directly coming and there are so many startups doing that. And we, as I said in the last discussions, everyone spoke about partnerships. So while we bring in the complete solution from farm till the fork, we always bring in partners who can then service those things at the right times. Then you have implement companies which can then come and service because obviously when labor is migrating from one part of the country, there is a shortage of labor in the other part of Punjab. There is a shortage of labor where in Bihar and UP we have excess of labor. So where there is a shortage of labor, we'll see a challenge that implements practice and other things will have to be utilized. So I think there's a mass shift that is happening and it has to be counterbalanced. So from where the labor is moving out, there will be, you will see a lot of technologies which will be more about automation, digital. But the challenge also will be in terms of where the labor is moving. And these are places where you have small world of farmers, like the size of the farmers are not very large. And that's where you will see the models of aggregation coming out there. Like no farm producers or organizations or groups, SFGs coming together. And the advantage is that the labor that we are talking about is, as mentioned earlier, is very skilled laborers. My personal views could be that they can be very positively utilized. They can become agropreneurs. For institutions to come and directly engage at the rural level, we need these people to come in and share the information and transact. So they can be created as agropreneurs in that particular model. They can be used for all of the expertise that they have. They can build their own infrastructures for storage, for processing, for primary value addition at the field level. So that the 10 to 20% which they normally do not own in that particular scenario can be earned at their own farm levels. The third is a lot of startups can think about sharing models, co-sharing models. Like say in parts of Punjab when labor is not available and you would need labor, then they could be newer in models of co-sharing of labor platforms. Like someone can say that, hey, this is the pool of labor which is available and for you to come and access that. And that will become a great asset for someone to come and utilize. So I think in all of these aspects that we talk about, digital enablement will play a very, very strong role. And for us having promoting them for the last 10 years, we see a great opportunity for all participants to come and see where digital can play a stronger role for them. From the farming side, pre-sewing, during the production and post-production, everywhere we can link all of the stakeholders on a digital platform. And I very well second everyone's thought that it doesn't work that you only bring your own solution and the problem is solved because agrarian problem is a very big one. It requires a lot of partnership cohesion altogether so that the end outcome can be the biggest value addition for the stakeholder. And what we believe is the pie is at the farm level. If you do not increase the per acre value, whatever you do at the top, the pie is not large. So you can not increase the efficiency there. So it's always great that we can collaborate to increase the per acre value and then all of the stakeholders will benefit from there. Definitely. That's a very interesting thought that shared resources, shared economies. We have seen everywhere in the low-hanging fruits of travel, mobility, but in farming, definitely something we have not seen. And also the per capita and per acreage that you mentioned. And apart from that, the per capita output from India is quite low compared with US, sorry, even for that matter, Russia or other countries. So we already have some questions coming in. So as we go along, I will take some of them. So one of our Facebook audience, Rushabh Jain, he has a question. Do you think the cold storage setup could help curbing the transportation crisis shortly affecting? So Milan, I'll come to you. I had this question in my mind that we have seen that a lot of food grain and everything gets wasted due to storage. Lack of storage infrastructure across the country, especially in backward areas. Maybe Punjab is more efficient in doing that, but maybe a Bihar or a Charcon does not. So how do you see this space emerging? And also given that now that the one lakh crore rupees is on infrastructure of agriculture, would you want a substantial amount of this money to go towards storage facilities? Right. So if you see a complete food wastage globally is around 30 to 35%. And for a country like us, so there's a term called loss and wastage. Wastage is when some from retail and consumer, they don't eat and but buy and losses due to the supply chain. So that's the loss we have. So whatever is being produced and not consumed is a total wastage and major chunk of that is loss in our supply chain. And that is because of multiple reasons. And one of the biggest reason is lack of storage. And if the money is being diverted in building large infrastructure, demand supply can be smoothened out where supply is high. You can store when the demand is high, you can give back. For example, in current scenario, if you talk about cold storage, I think maximum cold storage are potato cold storage. There are few for apple and carrots, but majority for potatoes. I think if we have a large storage ecosystem near farms, then it will definitely help to curb food wastage. That's what and increase investment in logistics where you can connect demand market and produce market more efficiently. That will also help to reduce good wastage. President, I'll come to you. So when we talk about logistics, so you know the e-commerce logistics of course was the lowest hanging fruit that everyone has taken up. There are companies like Reviso who built a technology and then put trucks on top of it to make it good for the truckers and everything. So in the food space, in the food space, agriculture space, what kind of solution, logistical solution is really required and should come up when we realize that we have this kind of wastage happening due to storage facilities. You have to unmute it. You have to unmute personnel. Yeah, so, you know, for the way I see this is that, you know, I break down logistics into two parts. One is the aspect which has to do with storage and the other one is in terms of transportation parts. Now, so far as the storage as Milan just said, I think, you know, one, one small thing that I would like to add there is also that it is not only about saying construction or adding physical capacity. It is also to see how do we innovate around storage structures? Do we need large cold storages? Do we need large warehouses to be built or do we need the disaggregated flexible storage models which can be, which is on demand storage. Whether it is trucking, transportation or storage, the problem lies near the farm gate. Now at the farm gate level, the unit sizes, the farm sizes are small. We don't know what is the kind of requirement of storage that comes in in a particular season. One may build a warehouse, build a cold storage and then sees that there are two droughts back to back. The whole investment goes on. So the whole thing around the storage pieces to try and innovate flexible storage structures, something like, you know, it's like a warehouse which can be folded up and then move to another location once the use is done. And I think those technologies exist in other parts of the world. As a company, we've already brought in and used that in a few geographies here and trying to now manufacture that in India itself. So that is one aspect of it. Similarly, when you come to transportation, see, we talk about large trucks, large scale transportation. But the problem that we are talking about is much, much smaller scale from the farm gate to a market. To say earlier it was Mondays, I'm not saying Mondays will vanish. We will still have a large portion of the produce being sold through the Monday ecosystem. So the requirement of transportation first starts from what do you do so that this produce which is available on the field is transported to the nearest aggregation point, which could be a Monday, which could be a procurement center, which could be any. And that is where my thought is that transportation solution will have to be looked at in that granular fashion as well. Now, whether tractor trawlers can be used, is there a way in which the excess trawlers that are available? Now tractors post harvest are mostly lying free. Now, is there a way that could be used to transport produce? Is there a way to aggregate that? Like the first step to overcome. Now, once it reaches a storage point with say a 5000, 2000 ton kind of a capacity, moving it to the factory is much more simpler. That's where probably a river go or a blackbuck or any other kind of a transportation mechanism can work. The third point is that we also need to harness the available transportation arrangements at the local level. Now, what we are doing is now we're trying to build a platform. And as I was saying, a lot of collaboration is something that we're currently working on where we are mapping all warehouses across the country. We are mapping labour unions associated with a particular warehouse. We are mapping transporters at a local level at that particular warehouse so that at that local level you could create that ecosystem and then build it. Now, the moment you reach a threshold, you would have many players coming in. You would have a much larger formal ecosystem coming in and playing that role there. But it's about saying how do we make this local available infrastructure available and also more efficient. So, Sandeep, I'll come to you. Now that we spoke about all these opportunities that are available and to do it. There is one leading economist who I was just recently listening to and I would not name him but he is a leading agricultural economist. He said that most of the agritic players who have come in or the app that they have built are just a fashionable way of being a middleman. So, the middleman is not actually going out but it's just that instead of a dhoti, gamcha or a kurta pajama, there's a person coming in a car and telling you things which are much more fashionable. So, that remains. Do you really think that that, how do you see this? Well, the first thing I want to clarify is that the middleman that is there in the market today probably has better cars and better mobile phones than any of us in this thing right now. So, I don't think you can classify middleman in the agri space necessarily as a dhoti, gamcha or that type of personality. So, it's a very interesting point that you bring up. I was just thinking about what Prasanna was saying earlier in terms of the farm gate and how that model will work. One of the challenges that we have had obviously is our land holdings have become smaller and as the land holdings become smaller, the ability for the farmer to store becomes lesser and lesser. The cycle in which they work, where they are getting money for the inputs, forces them to therefore sell immediately at the output time. So, now if I am sitting there at the farm gate and I have to sell, who do I sell to? So, the challenge over here isn't just about tech, it's about finance as well. So, it I think starts at the financing level, you have to be able to work with farmers in giving them the holding power to store and to be able to sell at the appropriate time. So, you know what Prasanna is doing at Arya or what Karthik is doing at Vekul, I think in some ways goes beyond just providing technology, they have to think about how does the farmers economics work in this process. Logistics is only one part of it. It's the underlying farmer economics that have to be fixed in this country and I think that is where, you know, whether you come in a shirt or whether you come in a car or whether you come in a gamchada. The whole idea is the understanding of that model and that is where the next generation entrepreneurs are coming in. So, the next generation entrepreneur that is coming in is thinking of the farmer as a unit producer, right? With the discussion that Karthik made about having, you know, all the people that you've heard on this chat have really talked about the need for improving the unit economics of the farmer. So, you're thinking about the farmer as the producing unit and till you fix that problem, you can't fix anything else. And that is the fundamental shift that you are seeing in the nature of how the interventions are happening. Is the new age entrepreneur is thinking of the entire value chain and is saying, okay, if I just improve the farmer's economics, right? I can increase the MSP for the farmer. If the consumer can't pay, then it doesn't work. So, I have to work along this entire value chain and therefore produce something that the consumer is willing to pay more for. So, it could be process tamarind, right? Now, if I take that process tamarind and I go all the way to making chutney with it, and the chutney sells for 10 times higher price than the tamarind process tamarind would have sold and 50 times a higher price than the unprocessed tamarind. I can pay the farmer a lot more, right? So, this is an ecosystem that is right now developing in the country. The government has tried, you know, food processing has been given a push multiple times for that very reason that I think everybody realizes that the solution is at the end consumer. Farm economics will improve with the end consumer, but how do you tie that together, right? So, the market linkage is where the next generation entrepreneur is coming in and solving the problem. And the middleman today doesn't work that way. The middleman is sitting more from a financing standpoint, a procurement standpoint rather than changing the consumer element standpoint. So, that is the fundamental shift that we are seeing as investors that today you have winter greens that's going out and creating the next set of condiments. Those condiments require a certain set of spices or a certain set of, you know, farm produce that Karthik will provide, right? And so, when Karthik needs to provide that quality of the farm produce, he will go and work with his sort of, you know, people who are going to fresh vegetables. And that fresh vegetables guy will say, okay, for me to do that, I need better technology and he'll come to Milan and say Milan, can you provide me a better solution for, you know, being able to grade my produce, right? So, I think it's a, it's across the system and you are seeing that ecosystem shift that we are, that is good for the country. Definitely. So, before I move to the next question, I'll just request our attendees again to post your questions. I see a lot of them are coming in and also to our Facebook audience to post questions, we'll take them up in a few minutes from now. I'll come to Kunal, you now and, you know, we, I just heard that, you know, that middleman theory that I bought up was specially because, you know, it came from someone and definitely are very terrific answers that can be given that it's not only the finances that we're looking for. So it's the farmer first approach I would believe that is there that you guys have. So tell me when it comes to procuring these people for these produce from the farmers. So what are the, what are the changes that are coming up and have already come up or we can see in the future in terms of procurement which are different from what a middleman or a Monday person would do rather than you would, you know, instead what you would do. Okay, so I think, yeah, I think what is also happening in agriculture is that the consumer behaviors are changing, right? There is a elite consumer and their consumption behaviors are very different. Their requirements are also very unique now. So they are asking for organic, they're asking for traceable, they are asking, if you go to Europe, they're asking for even sustainably grown products, right? Now given that the large base in the western world is moving towards that type of consumption behavior, there is a huge opportunity for farmers to actually adopt those practices and then create products which can then be the right fitment for those type of opportunities that exist. So technology again plays a very critical role because what we see is like when you have customers in Europe, they will go to Africa because there is much more transparency and the logistics are better, but you can bring in the transparency and the trust on a technology platform that, hey, these are the 5,000 or 500 farmers, 10,000 acres that we are operating in India and you can see it live every single time an activity is happening so that you know from the time of sowing till the time of harvesting, what has happened with the crop? What was the seed used? What was the fertilizer used? Was it a pest and disease? So for the end customer, for the retailer or for the next intermediary who is buying these commodities in bulk, they are assured that this transaction is giving me the credit worthiness in terms of coming in and engaging here. So I think this is the next evolution of work that is happening, especially for the agriculture farming sector that enabled with a strong logistics where housing and other such solutions would be very important because if you see one part of the work that's happening is go for high value crops, which means more of this and these are high value crops which is more even perishable, right? So and if you cannot handle that at real time, when the production is ready, so in our platform what we do is we start forecasting for all of the 2.1 million farmers that you engage with four weeks in advance that this is what is going to come, right? And this information is available to the supply chain players so that they know exactly in which location, which farm, which aggregated manner you will get what quality produces well. So that is something that you help the businesses to be, so proactive and predictive is very, very important these days in terms of supply chain management. Second is in terms of quality as well. So if you, I mean, when you have a greater quality output coming out, A grade will cost and if you go to a very close area in Bangalore, Chikbalapur, now when you see a farmer A grade and a B grade is very, very, like now it's not very different, right? It's small size factor but A is selling for 12 rupees whereas B is selling for 4 rupees. That's the deviation in the price that happens, right? But with the right interventions it can increase the A grade of the productivity right now with asking the farmers to use the right practices, use the right methods of cultivation, their income substantially improves from there and then also he's able to get a larger market. So I think these are the ways where we feel and we are supporting our set of farmers to maximize their income opportunity of whatever area that they are operating in. I think I'll come to you before we go to questions from our viewers that, you know, I just heard Kunal saying that, you know, improving the quality of produce. So will we see, you know, more offerings from same architectures like, say, getting a skymet to give, you know, from whoever you are procuring, procuring your produce, you will need to give weather information to them. A lot of people have issues with crop insurance. They say that it's under paper but they do not get it. So these kind of things, would we see all this come together on one singular platform so that their quality, their yield, their per hectare produce increases and of course the quality definition. Absolutely. I think it's already happening. Just to touch upon some of the earlier points you made, yes, if you are another app which is doing a farm to folk story, you are another middleman. I'm being as plain as that and it doesn't work that way. Farm to folk also is not viable or I mean the reason I was very, very cautious talking about efficiency earlier was because frankly the corporate costs of a startup are not necessarily more efficient than the efficiency of the current supply chain. Where there is opportunities in soil to sale, when you start engaging with the farmer at the beginning and giving them inputs, giving them advisory and tuning the production all along, even doing the crop planning, then there is opportunity for both the farmer and for the intermediary player to be a little more than an intermediary. Delivering uniform retail quality for example like Ponal was saying will definitely improve the realization for the farmer. And to do that we are already seeing a number of AgTech startups partner. We are weather stations that have been put up for example by players including us and many others which gives the farmers a simple SMS saying this is what's going to happen in your area based on micro climate conditions. That in turn governs the behavior of the farm. Similarly the portable soil health test kits that have been set up by you know startups to make sure the farmer doesn't need to go to a Kashiwiki on Kendra all the way to get the test done. And this information is used to design the package of practices and offer this to you know therefore offer a better yield and more uniform. These synergies are already starting to happen and we see much more of that happen. Great. Thank you. So, you know, I'll just start taking some of the questions that have come to us on Facebook before we take questions from our attendees here. So, he asked a question. My question to the panel is why the village level entrepreneur can't be supported for storage and transportation, because from my experience the village community is more comfortable in connecting with the local. Milan, would you want to take that one? Right. So, that can very well happen and given the need and the production of a specific local area and the infusion or the support to promote local entrepreneur. The availability of capital along with identification of the need can definitely facilitate that and it will help building the micro storage ecosystem as well. Okay, okay. I'll take another question. This is from the team. He says, do you think that the existing deep rooted market committee middleman network will allow loss of their hold on supply chain. If the resistance cannot be overcome the reforms will become meaningless or more of an observation but I'll come to Karthik to, you know, because you said that yes any other app will remain a middleman only so he says that can you can you really exist. The deep rooted existing market committee middleman network. How difficult is that for you and then I'll ask the same question to Funal to create this and get the produce. I think it started to happen in multiple locations already where three, see ultimately any supply chain is moment of material information and money and today all three are being done a little more efficiently than they were in the past. You have much better road systems for material movement technology for information and digital payments for money. So the farmer is also an entrepreneur and the farmer realizes, you know, over time obviously there is some resistance to start with but the farmer realizes over time which is the more efficient solution for them and based on that they make a choice. So yes, there are deep rooted relationships. Yes, initially there is some challenge in breaking through less about especially in markets for example in southern India is less about the whole that they have as lenders and so on but more about the comfort or safety. But we're already seeing for example clusters like Malur or Kolar emerge where there are, you know, at least 14 or 15 collection centers, which compete with the local market and the farmer actually has a choice of where they want to set. So it will happen. It will not happen in one fell sweep. It will take its time but the markets that have these three convergences which are falling in place will move faster. We got a question on me and this is from someone called Deepak Kumar from Midnapore district in West Bengal. He says that we work for small and marginal farmers in remote areas. Our services is from soil testing to market market linkage of farmer produce. Right now we're offering our services to more than 1000 farmer in our Midnapore district. We face the difficulty of raising funds for expansion. You know, when agriculture is supported, why can't agriculture be, when agriculture can be supported, why can't agriculture be supported, especially given that our farmers are not that excellent. Sandeep, you want to take that one? So I think that's a broader question in the Agri investment space right now. There are very few investors investing in Indian agriculture at this point. I'll be very open about that. We are starting to see more people starting to participate now. One of the challenges has always been Agri is a very regulated market and investors generally don't like regulated markets very much. So that is now shifting with the new models that you're seeing, some of which are on this panel. There is an openness to fund and I think most of the companies that are over here have raised money from investors. The key thing for you know, this gentleman who has asked the question to think about is what is the path to building a large company. I think everybody who's sitting here is thinking about building a business which can eventually either list on the stock exchange or can scale to be sold or whatever it is. So if you're raising money, you have to think about what are the returns and how are the returns for the investors going to come from. And that is where one area where I think it's partly a question of information. The reason why you're having this panel with Agri Tech entrepreneurs is giving information to people who are listening about what are the ways that you can think about Agri Tech and how can you think about scale in the agriculture space. So, you know, a thousand farmers today is not a very large number. A lot of the people that are on this panel over here are probably dealing with, you know, 100 times that. And there is still an opportunity to grow that faster. So my sense is that if you are thinking about raising money for agriculture, one of the key things is to think about scale. The second thing in agriculture that I go back to this point is unit economics are still something that have to be sort of proven in the agriculture space, whereas the money who's going to pay for it. And, you know, is there enough are there enough large profit pools here that can be captured. And so that is the second area where, you know, you're starting to see more companies emerge there, but it's still, you know, in the past, most of the people that have made money in agriculture have been typically family businesses. Yeah, you know, we have more than 250 last time said 250 and it's a clear country, if I'm not wrong, but you know, we have very few who have made the mark. So, I'll take another question that has come to our chat. And this is from Georgie Jones. He asked Milan, what do you think about preservation of excess produce through quick freeze deep vacuum technology this thing. Think space food with the current scenario with food waste challenges with COVID-19 with regard to distribution and increasing the market partly I think you answered the second part of the question but if you can see the first part of the question, what do you think about preservation of excess produce food with deep freeze vacuum technology. Milan. Yeah, sorry. So there are multiple. I'll just add to few more technologies out there, which essentially adds layer to a productive layer, a drying vacuum definitely is one and then a septic packaging. So there are multiple ways. You can preserve food for on palm processing as well. People do to ensure whatever is a plus is changed to more higher shelf life intermediary either processed or produced food. And these can and but but again the cost and economic should make sense. What is the surplus. Where will we get that information from most of the produce which are generated near farm gates are low in quantity, which are surplus. And how do you then move these systems or plants or machines to ensure those are cost effectively consume adding that's the unanswered question. Very few startups are trying to solve that, especially from the farm gate processing side, but yet the scaling of that with the cost benefit analysis is yet to be seen. Okay, so we'll try to take some questions from our attendees were posted here so if we can give the audio to Mamtha Mamtha. Okay, so my first question was actually you know most of the discussion was surrounding around the rural farmers and all right, but then we are also seeing a trend where in you know because of more promising precision farming methods, right, more protected healthcare and all. But there is a lot of risk. These are precision farming methods reduce the risk actually there is higher promise. So seeing those a lot of corporates are entering the farming segment. So, but rural farmers are not able to embrace these farming methods. So you think this is going to impact the rural farming segment actually, because of more investors and corporates coming and entering the agri segment. Yeah, so I think that's a, that's a, that's right. Question as well right now so there is a lot of corporatization of agriculture that's happening and there is a there is a lot of hyper precision agriculture that's that's going in and playing an important role. I think the need of that eventually comes from the consumers themselves which are in the urban areas and they want certain quality products products and produce a locally sourced supplied in that particular time frame so So I think that's where the role of larger corporates are coming and they are basically acquiring areas in the coolest with me is vicinity of those large large urban cluster. We are also seeing this thing in terms of like no different countries like normally the Middle East after the COVID they have switched over their gears and they are saying that no they now have to go into hyper precision hydroponic based production within their own country because they now has to be also self reliant on on their own food security aspect so I feel that there is a huge focus on that side. But given the extent of the population that agriculture has to support 9.9.2 billion population by around 2050. The role of all of the all of the value chains even the smallholder farmers will be playing a very critical role. Eventually this this technologies which will be which are being done at a pilot level will get scaled up and then this will slowly transition and smallholder farmers will also have the access in couple of years from now so I think these are these are great pilot these are great stories to start with but eventually things will be transformed and you will see it reaching to a much larger base. No I agree completely as Kunal mentioned you know these are extremely important initiatives and we will have to keep innovating. The other thing around the involvement of corporates I think you know some amount of you know assurance around supply to them is going to be extremely critical and I think you know some of these innovations bundled with the kind of assurance that many organizations that are here on this platform and elsewhere. That's the visibility that they bring and I think you know that integration between the supply side and the demand side of the ecosystem is going to be extremely critical and I think what covid has done is primarily to facilitate and sort of you know leapfrog in that in that direction so I think you know that is where I see this. Thank you so much. Our next question we will take from Raghunath Ji. Can we have his audio please Raghunath Raghunath can you. Raghunath can you unmute and speak. Yes Raghunath please quite with your question. I will read out his question I think his line is a little disturb so he says kind of massive automation can happen in Indian agriculture like from sewing to till post harvest management and also finally supply chain. And also how to fix optimize price fluctuations from farm produce and cannot we do demand forecasting for farm produce. I think there are two parts to the question but I will answer that maybe perfectly good one. Again we're starting to see this already. I'll start with the supply chain and the forecasting and then I'll go back into the farm itself. On demand forecasting yes I think it's quite important that we do this because frankly the demand per se is less elastic. But we notice that you know in our five years of existence tomato has been one rupee at the farm gate and gone up to 100 rupees at the farm gate nine times. And that's primarily because the information that's available to the farmer on the demand is driven by arrivals and the nearest Monday and that's usually past information it does not forward looking information. So the farmer basically is told the same information that the that the intermediary tells to every other farmer. Therefore there is over sewing overcropping and then everybody retreats the cycle is there. If true demand can be made visible to the farmer through smart technologies then there is definitely value in that. For example if sewing can be monitored real time and information given to the farmer saying so many so much acreage is already done. Therefore it's almost like red yellow or green signal on whether you should plant a particular crop or not. And that's given real time that the farmer can take decisions. So that's one area of potential automation based solution that's coming on supply chain. We have actually says observed that you know the products themselves are fairly unwieldy. And therefore there is a lot of human involvement in physical movement of these products for example in distribution centers and so on. There are beginnings of distribution center automation already for fresh produce for example COVID will accelerate that because of social distancing being mandated and labor unavailability being there. Definitely there is scope for automated cross docking solutions etc. The only challenge historically has been that the solutions are available in the West but they operated a very different scale. How do we scale it down to enable Indian companies to step in and then gradually build scale as they go along is the real challenge that we see over there. On the farm and yes we do see a lot of potential over there but frankly I am not the most qualified person to comment on it. We are already seeing a lot of equipment sharing kind of solutions that have come up and I'm sure that more will come up over there. You would want to add to that. I think this ties back to the earlier point that was made around precision farming. There is you know I think you have to think about crops in various categories. So there are certain crops the grain for example pulses grown at scale. And you won't you know you will see mechanization there so I will not call it automation. But I think mechanization is to Karthik's point that we are starting to see a lot more mechanization happen. You mentioned that you know the tractor sales at Mahindra have gone up. And that's partly being driven by the fact that people are trying to become more self reliant and not depend on you know labor as much right. So I think that trend is definitely in the direction of mechanization. The challenge obviously remains that land holdings that are small cannot necessarily afford it. So sharing is also we're starting to see more entrepreneurs come in with sharing solutions. Which I think is good because it reduces the capital cost for a farmer and makes it feasible. The broader issue again goes back to you know the payback periods on many of these capital expenditures make it prohibitive for farmers to take that on. And that is probably one of the biggest reasons why you haven't seen the level of automation or mechanization come into Indian farming. So till that you know whether it is FBOs or whether it is some form of collectivization that happens we won't see as much mechanization or automation. We've just run out of time so we'll just take one more question before we start the session. So there is I know it's more of an ask for an opinion that you know we talked about agriculture and there is another part which I was also talking to someone is that you know with now people also looking at producing their own food for say on you know in urban areas and also someone wants to ask about organic farming and will the advocate players participate in that as well. Yeah so I think these are two separate questions. Consumers are also getting very conscious about the food they're consuming so the urban consumers are trying to see that now can we produce it ourselves and then consume it locally at our own place. Because they are sometimes scared about the news that is floating in social media that how food is grown how it is so how it is procured source and then supplied to them to them. I think that's that's a fundamental. I think in some pockets again as pilots people are trying and exploring that. So that's that's my quick view on on this particular piece. Okay. Melan anything before we go back. So this is not area of expertise. Okay. All right. So thank you gentlemen so much. Before I let all of you go I have a question for some deep especially before we're after special that you know till now I think investment was you know supposed to be soft returns and everything so but now do you think that investment in going to it's not going to remain a soft investment. And when can we see a unicorn out of an exit. So soft by soft I assume you mean impact investing. Yeah. So it isn't. Yeah. So I think the commercial investors the VC funds have started taking a lot more interest in Agri Agri Tech. I think that's a question you're asking. And that is absolutely true. And I think there is you know there are people sitting in this in this on this panel that I think are all expecting to become unicorns. So I would want that and I think that will happen in two ways. So one is we are you know there is there is obviously a large market in India itself but I think we're not referred to this point earlier in his observation that India can be a sort of supplier to the world. And we mentioned Europe as one example, you know the organic point that has been brought up. So we have a company in our portfolio that is supplying globally and organic from India, because Indian Indian growing practices had been organic. So, so we have seen this company scale, you know, rapidly because of that. So I think there is opportunity to take in the Indian farmer and provide the market linkage. And in that process, create a large enough business that would be worth, you know, could be a unicorn but even if it's not a unicorn, it's 200 here for a million dollar business. It is an attractive business for a for a commercial investor. And so I expect that commercial investments would only increase in the Indian Agri space. Thank you so much, gentlemen. It was really insightful to have you all here and I'm sure that our attendees have, you know, learned a lot for this session. We would love to see you again sometime on our webinar. And, you know, as all of you said that, you know, collaboration and more efficient is what is required to make agriculture, you know, thrive in this country, which 60% of the population actually depends. So thank you gentlemen so much and have a good day.