THINKAG NEWS: THE LAUNCH AND BEYOND

Corporates across industries are gearing up to adopt innovation. Agriculture should be no different.

The ThinkAg platform was launched in October, which witnessed senior members from over 50 food and agri companies in India and preceded, by Dr. Harsh Kumar Bhanwala, Chairman NABARD. The main objective of ThinkAg is to build an industry-wide platform for corporates to adopt, partner with and invest in agtech innovators.

ThinkAg is proud to have the biggest names in the food and agriculture industry as its members. BASF, Syngenta, Monsanto, Godrej Agrovet, The Allana Group, Shrinivasa Hatchers and many more. As ThinkAg’s director & co-founder Hemendra Mathur rightly put in his recent agfunder article “ There is a willingness to connect and partner with the right startups”

The three pillars of ThinkAg are Aglab, Aginvest, and Agconnect.

Our goal with Aglab is to enable rapid scaling of innovations through corporate partnerships, commercial contracts, pilot projects, lab access, and even distribution networks. Post the launch; a partnership was inked to share technology know-how between an innovator presenter at ThinkAg and a multinational agri conglomerate.

But ThinkAg’s role is going to go beyond playing a matchmaker. ThinkAg has formulated several committees for advancing its objectives for example; a committee consisting of key agri investors and corporates to develop protocols of engagement between innovators and corporates. This would include SOPs as well corporate and innovator training sessions. This will lead to sharing of experiences and learnings by corporates and intends to improve the overall working between corporates and innovators.

With Agconnect, ThinkAg will focus on knowledge dissemination and thought leadership through publications and research reports. Last week, Rabo Bank Foundation has commissioned ThinkAg to study the Agtech landscape of India and propose solutions that can be adopted by Fintech's and Financial institutions to facilitate ease of lending and increase penetration of loans to small and marginal landholders. Here we will engage with innovators and financial institutions alike and dig into the potential of untapped data generated by both the stakeholders.

Investments in agtech have picked up momentum in recent years. AgInvest aims to expose our corporate members, family offices and venture capital funds to a steady pipeline of industry vetted investment ready innovations. Commercializing R&D in the Indian labs is also a goal of ThinkAg. We are in the process of partnering with several national institutions to identify the most viable technologies out there with the support of our corporate members.

We are excited by the potential ThinkAg has shown within 3 months of its launch and are gearing up for our next event in February in Mumbai. We are also thrilled with the response the platform has received from the ag industry and is getting ready for engaging with more corporate partners from across the country. This newsletter intends to give a glimpse of the work at ThinkAg. We are also endeavoring to bring out the knowledge from the leaders of Indian Ag industry through an editorial. Apart from industry trends and updates, we will also feature our corporate members and their view on innovation in this newsletter. Watch this space for more action!