Omnivore to set up $150 million fund to boost rural agritech

Omnivore, an agritech venture capital firm, said it is setting up a new $150 million fund to be invested in tech-driven, predictive crop insights that can help improve productivity and profitability f

Omnivore, an agritech venture capital firm, said it is setting up a new $150 million fund to be invested in tech-driven, predictive crop insights that can help improve productivity and profitability for farmers in India. The VC firm would start raising its new fund towards the end of this year and would have another $132 million invested in various agritech ventures in the country by 2023. It already invested in 30 agritech start-ups and these ventures in turn are touching the lives of around 10 million farmers in the country.”The fund will take care of our needs for four years,” Mark Kahn, managing partner told The Hindu. “We have been seeing an acceleration in technology adoption in agriculture and expect this to continue.’’ Fasal, one of the Omnivore-invested firms, developed an IoT-based and AI-powered precision farming platform for horticulture crops. Interestingly, banana farmers in Jalgaon, grape farmers in Nasik and coffee farmers in Coorg claim to be currently benefiting from this platform.