ThinkAg NEWS: Welcoming ThinkAg's New CEO and hosting innovators from New South Wales Australia

Welcoming Natasha Patel

Natasha has 3 decades of experience in financial services at various leadership roles with multi national organisations such as Standard Chartered bank and HongKong Bank.  She has a long record of driving business strategies and a personal enthusiasm for business enhancement. Here experience in financial services covers both commercial and transaction banking across several geographies - Asia Pacific, MENA, Europe and the US - and  industry segments including Consumer Brands, Retail, Insurance, Telecom, Technology, and Oil and Gas. She has also partnered extensively with corporate clients to advance their social agendas.

More recently, Natasha has been able to successfully apply her financial services acumen to the development sector by partnering with UHNIs,Corporates and Foundations both national and international to advance their social agendas. She has helped create and implement the philanthropic dialogue between donors, grantees and intermediaries including the government, utilising a learning, field based and collaborative approach accompanied by an understanding of the development sector and its needs. Partnering with national and international agencies like OECD, ISC, BMGF, ON and others to provide donors with strong platforms to learn and contribute their philanthropic intent. Her current engagements as Senior Advisor and Board Member for India Sanitation Coalition ( ISC) and CEO of ThinkAg will give her two very strong platforms to continue to engage with practitioners in the development sector bringing her knowledge of financing mecanisms to bear in creating innovative solutions for both the sanitation and food and agriculture sectors. Natasha has a PhD in French Lierature from the Sorbonne University in Paris.

Contact: natasha@thinkag.in

AgLab with Indian and Australian Innovators in Partnership with the NSW Government

AgLab, AgConnect, AgInvest and AgConnect are the four key focus areas of ThinkAg. With AgLab with aim to connect the most promising innovators with the industry. The goal of the event is to be a gateway for generating partnerships and developing insights from the industry.

ThinkAg in partnership with NSW govt hosted it's third AgLab event in Mumbai this month.

This event saw participation from members of the ThinkAg network and other leaders from the food and agriculture industry.

5 presenters each from New South Wales, Australia and from India presented their solutions.

From NSW

1. Agriscan-  Developer of RAIN (UHF RFID) ‘tag and trace’  technologies

2. AGTRIX - Web-based farm management products

3. Cpu-australia- Developing an industry agnostic, 2&3D visualisation platform

4. Flurosat- A crop health solutions provider that delivers early, accurate, and actionable information on farm performance and plant nutrition to farmers and agronomists.

5. Solution Blue- A fly larvae (maggot) production company that coverts green waste to protein and fertiliser 

From India

1. EVO- Developing next generation plant based animal products using nutrition and food science

2. Behtar Zindagi- Providing farm management applications to improve productivity

3. Hummingbird- Bringing sharp insights from the farm through specific data structures

4. Technify Biz- Farm 2 Fork- working with farmer collectives to provide higher price realisation for farmers

5. Tan90- Developed portable solar powered cold storage devices to eliminate agricultural waste and preserve farm produce.

The event had presentations from the Govt of Maharashtra's Innovation Society and GATE-Global Agtech ecosystem-a collaborative research and technology facility in Australia specifically designed to develop ag-tech ideas

Agritech Exchange- An Entrepreneurial Learning Circle with NSW Govt in Bengaluru

ThinkAg believes in the power of collaboration and sharing insights. This closed door event in Bengaluru witnessed agtech entrepreneurs from both countries exchange learnings from their journey and specifically lessons learned on their way to scale-up. Krista Mentjox - Principle Project Manager at NSW Department of Primary Industries and also part of the GATE initiative moderated a unique panel discussion that consisted of agtech startups from both the countries.

Check this space for more updates on the ThinkAg's initiatives.