The agricultural sector continues to be the biggest employer in India, with over 46% of the population engaged in agricultural activities, a number that has surprisingly grown in the past few years even though globally India’s image is a tech services and products giant.

At the same time, the average annual growth rate in the agriculture and allied sector over the past five years has been around 4.4%, according to the Economic Survey 2026.

It highlighted that while AAGR has shown improvement, exceeding the global average of 2.9%, yields across several crops continue to trail behind global numbers. Enter: crop productivity. Several startups in the sector have been trying to optimise agriculture for the past decade through technology, providing farmers with everything from hundreds of data points to speciality tools they require to increase yields.

However, most of them have failed to scale to a level that will actually make a dent on the highly fragmented ecosystem, particularly due to the nature of this business.

“India as a country drives its growth based on agriculture, yet we haven’t seen very few unicorns or success stories in agritech based businesses. The primary reason is fragmentation, unique geographical problems and lack of “one solution that fits all problems” products or services,” said Harsh Deodhar, principal, Enrisson India Capital.

He highlighted that many investors have steered clear of agritech, because startups operating in the space are still perceived as high risk and the solutions lack a targeted approach to a single problem or geography.

Instead, agritech businesses have tried to import tech-backed business models from other industries and countries and applied them to the Indian ecosystem, which varies greatly not just from state to state, but even within different villages, crops and communities.

Hence, despite agriculture being a significant driver of the country’s economy, agritech penetration in India remains significantly low, at around 2% of the total addressable agricultural market, according to AgriStar cofounder and chief executive officer Amith Agarwal.

Price-sensitivity, language barriers, lack of trust along with continued reliance on local input providers and government advisories have also been roadblocks to the growth of agritech in India.

Where VISTAAR Fits In

To solve this, the government has now proposed the roll out of Bharat VISTAAR (Virtually Integrated System to Access Agricultural Resources), a multilingual AI-driven platform announced during the Union Budget 2026.

The tool will integrate AI with the preexisting AgriStack portals and the ‘package of practices’ provided by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), which includes scientific, region-specific guidelines for crop production, including seed selection, nutrient management, and pest control. This will enhance farm productivity, will lead to better farmer decision making........

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