Digital agriculture in LMICs - 20 Nov #101
New capital in Africa, a digital ag launch in Sri Lanka, a raise and a shutdown in India
Featured stories
06/11/25
Ventures Platform raises $64M for “painkiller” agritech solutions
Agritech is one of four focus sectors for Ventures Platform, Africa’s leading seed-stage fund, which has announced a USD 64 million first close of its second vehicle, the “VP Pan-African Fund II”. Targeting USD 75 million, the fund has attracted new and returning investors including IFC, Standard Bank South Africa, British International Investment (BII), French development finance institution Proparco, through its EU-backed Choose Africa VC programme, and Nigeria’s iDICE initiative.
Ventures Platform says the fund will back “painkiller” solutions that bridge infrastructure gaps. In agritech, this translates to smallholder finance, market-linkage platforms, and more scalable innovations leveraging GenAI. Since launching in 2016, Ventures Platform has built a strong track record, funding over 90 startups including Nigerian agritech Thrive Agric, which is featured in the Financial Times’ 2024 list of Africa’s 25 fastest-growing companies.
10/11/25
Farmdar gets ADB Ventures investment to scale AI-driven ag in Emerging APAC
Singapore-based agritech Farmdar, a precision agriculture company originally funded in Pakistan, has secured a strategic investment (undisclosed amount) from ADB Ventures, the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) facility to scale technology solutions for impact in Asia and the Pacific. The investment will enable Farmdar to scale its AI-driven crop intelligence platform across emerging Asia, expanding into new South and Southeast Asian markets. It will also help deepen pilots in regions facing rising climate and productivity pressures.
Image credit: Farmdar
Launched in 2021, Farmdar combines high-resolution satellite imagery with AI models to deliver field-level intelligence on crop health, input use and yield risk for agribusinesses, financial institutions and supply-chain operators. Its core products are CropScan, which provides actionable planning insights for agribusinesses, and YieldPro, a monitoring system that helps farmers and agribusinesses improve yields, optimise inputs and better navigate climate-related pressures. Among its clients there are Bayer Crop Science and local companies like sugar producers in Pakisatn, Thailand and Kenya.
The round also saw participation from existing backers Indus Valley Capital and Moment Ventures. In October last year, as reported by ArisTechia, the agritech raised a pre-Series A round led by Silicon Valley’s Moment Ventures, an early-stage VC.
13/11/25
India’s agritech BharatAgri shuts down after funding shortfall
Indian agritech startup BharatAgri, a digital advisory and input-market linkages platform, has ceased operations after failing to secure new funding and sustain its business amid widening losses. Founded in 2017, the company raised USD 12 million from investors such as Arkam Ventures, India Quotient, and Omnivore, including USD 6 million in an extended Series A round in 2023. Despite building a user base of over one million, BharatAgri posted heavy losses at INR 179 million (USD 2 million) in FY2024, which ultimately made the business unsustainable.
BharatAgri offered AI-driven smart-farming advisory services designed to help farmers identify and procure the right inputs. Its platform included personalised dynamic crop calendars powered by proprietary algorithms, satellite-based monitoring, and soil and water testing.
The company’s shutdown highlights the broader difficulties faced by consumer-focused agritech models, many of which struggle to achieve viable unit economics at scale. As a result, investors are increasingly shifting their attention toward B2B agri-supply chain and input-distribution models, which tend to offer more predictable margins and clearer pathways to sustainable growth.
14/11/25
SLT Mobitel launches farmer app in Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka’s mobile operator SLT Mobitel has launched the smart-agriculture platform yāya, developed in partnership with Fintelex, a local tech company that builds digital solutions for agriculture, health and education. The yāya app delivers daily practical agricultural information — including real-time weather updates, crop-specific guidance, expert inputs from the University of Colombo, and first-aid instructions — in audio, illustrated and video formats, directly to farmers’ mobile devices via SLT Mobitel’s network.
Photo credit: SLT Mobitel
The launch adds to Sri Lanka’s active agritech landscape, where telcos such as Dialog and Mobitel have provided mobile-based agriculture services for several years. SLT Mobitel also offers Fazenda Smart Agro, a predominantly B2B IoT- and AI-driven agriculture management system designed for large-scale farm and plantation monitoring. Dialog, Sri Lanka’s largest mobile operator, operates Govi Mithuru, a farmer-registration service that provides tailored guidance based on location, crop type, water source and planting date.
Good reads (what ArisTechia is reading..)
11/11/25
India needs state-level agritech sandboxes, new report says
A new report by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) finds that, despite a highly developed agritech sector, nearly 86 per cent of India’s farmers are still not benefiting from digital agriculture solutions, mainly due to a fragmented innovation ecosystem.
India has 60 agricultural universities, more than 700 district-level agricultural extension centres (Krishi Vigyan Kendras), and a thriving startup ecosystem, however, ASSOCHAM notes that the country lacks a unified approach to testing agritech innovations. The report therefore recommends establishing state-level agritech sandboxes to test and validate solutions in real-world conditions, involving government agencies, research institutions and startups.
The study also calls for a Agricultural Data Commons built on the “FAIR principles” (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable), citing Telangana’s Agriculture Data Exchange (ADeX) as a potential blueprint. ADeX was launched in 2023 by the government of Telangana, in collaboration with the World Economic Forum under a Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) framework, to enable secure and standardised agricultural data sharing.
Finally, the report advocates for stronger farmer-focused agritech models, including context-specific product design, improved last-mile infrastructure, innovative financing systems such as credit-linked adoption loans to support the uptake of digital agriculture tools, and expanded digital-literacy programmes for farmers and Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs), a pillar of India’s agricultural value chains.