For electric mobility, 2022 was a defining year, the agritech startups also received highest funding, driven by government policies
The latest report by global management consultancy Bain & Company and Indian Venture and Alternate Capital Association (IVCA) highlights positive developments in the EV and Agritech sector last year. “Finally, green shoots were visible across emergent sectors: electric vehicle (EV), agritech, and deep tech (space tech, generative AI and climate/clean tech) saw significant interest,” the report revealed.
EV
Calling it a defining year for EV, the research showed that the electric mobility sector recorded 2.4x growth in funding. Annual VC investments in India (EV focused) increased from 0.3% to 0.8%.
Key drivers of its sustained growth will be regulation methods like Fame II, PLI-led subsidies, high TCO of ICE vehicles caused by fuel price increases, and BSVI. Early deals in domestic supply chain enablers increased in volume as a result of expanding prospects driven by supply-side innovation (e.g., battery swapping, charging infra) will also give it a thrust.
Shedding light on its future prospects, the report said that the investors are optimistic about the Indian EV market, which is expected to generate $75–100 billion in sales by 2030 because of the development of OEMs and ecosystems, platformisation of EV fleets, and improving cost competitiveness.
Many investors are projected to participate in the EV business, including corporate interest from companies like Reliance and Shell, as well as strategic investment from market leaders with ambitious EV aspirations like Bajaj and TVS.
Agritech
One of the highest funding years for agritech was in 2022, when total investments surpassed $500M, driven by a select group of large businesses who showed scalability.
In 2022, agritech experienced a number of follow-on rounds with improvements in business models tailored to India (such as precision agriculture—Absolute) and end-to-end ecosystem expansion by numerous scale firms (e.g., DeHaat).
The sector has registered increase in investments throughout phases for industries like precision farming (Absolute, Cropin)and demand driven by new business models like subscription-based monetisation and more visibility driven by IoT.
While Agri Offtake (B2B market linkages) saw 39% investments, agri inputs had 22% investments, followed by precision farming at 20% and aquaculture at 5%. The total number of VC deals increased from 29 in 2021 to 44 in 2022.
“Agritech likely to see mixed momentum—while a few scale players with funding have emerged, business models need to be refined and ability to demonstrate adoption by agritech value chain at scale remains to be tested,” noted the report.
What is driving it is a large market potential for tech-driven change in a historically inefficient industry with multiple intermediaries, lack of credit, supply chain linkage gaps.
Also, government stimulus programmes that encourage the use of technology and subsidies for using Kisan drone and AgriStack database.
The report highlighted that the launch of agritech focused funds in India for instance, Omnivore may further propel enable innovation at early stages.
The research also noted an mergent interest in early-stage deals in sectors such as generative AI, space tech, and climate tech.