| | November 20218VANTAGE POINTA startup is a company designed to grow fast. Startups quest to create an identity for themselves through a repeatable and scalable business model. These startups co-exist and compete with the traditional business ecosystem. India has more than 1000 startups in Agritech domain. There are also more than 300 incubation centers to support such startups.During the pandemic, the traditional ecosystem was struggling, as most agriculture mandis remained shut. However, the startups came-up with innovative solutions. Pandemic helped catalyze a shift across the agricultural economy, away from traditional, informal, and analog markets towards a more innovative, formal, and digital one. While the customers were confined to homes, startups could take orders through apps, aggregate the demand and arranged supplies to their doorstep. Similarly, they could pay directly to the farmers' account through direct bank transfer (DBT). There were many digital technologies that were silently executed during the Covid to make the physical flow smooth. The Covid environment did provide a space for the Agri-tech startups to grow their farmers and consumer's bases multi-fold.The startups can be grouped in to the following major categories:MarketplaceIt is a physical or virtual space where the activity of buying and selling of products takes place. The players like NeML, e-NAM or Market Mirch only provide a platform for transaction and they themselves are not the transacting parties. They take some user fees as service charges for use of their platform. But there are startups who operate like a marketplace and are also the transacting parties. Some of them are listed below:AGRITECH STARTUP- A SILVER LINING IN COVIDBy Mihir Mohanta, General Manager Supply Chain, Mother Dairy Fruit & Vegetable
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