SEEDS OF INNOVATION

AGRITECH STARTUPS ARE REWRITING INDIA'S FARM ECONOMY THROUGH MADE-IN-INDIA SOLUTIONS IN STORAGE, FINTECH, AND CLIMATE RESILIENT FARMING.

- JOE C. MATHEW

EEKI FOODS IS doing the unthinkable in water-starved, sun-scorched Rajasthan. It is growing tomatoes in water. The Kota-based startup has developed hydroponic growth chambers that use 80% less water than traditional farming but deliver four times the yield. The plants are nurtured in a nutrient-rich water solution within an IoT-controlled chamber. Eeki is already expanding into the Middle East.

“It’s an amazingly frugal, made-in-India technology using a patented polymer chamber. It’s massively scalable, and 150 acres are already under management,” says Anjali Bansal, founding partner of Avaana Climate and Sustainability Fund, which supports Eeki. Bansal calls it the future of food.

In neighbouring Delhi-NCR, Prasanna Rao wanted to make an impact in agribusiness when he co-founded arya.ag 13 years ago. A former commodity finance expert, Rao realised within a year that algorithms alone can’t protect farmers from price risk. “It was humbling to realise that financing and price risk management cannot be done without physical control over the goods that farmers could hold. You need a model built around traditional mechanisms like warehouses or storage-based financing. Storage must be the foundation,” he says.