India has witnessed a sharp rebound in agri foodtech spending during 2024 with investments rising 215 per cent to $2.6 billion, as per venture capital firm AgFunder’s latest Global Agrifoodtech Investment Report 2025. During the year, the global agri foodtech showed some signs of recovery in 2024, reaching $16 billion in funding, just a 4 per cent drop from 2023.
AgFunder said the increased investment in developed markets such as the US and Netherlands, and developing nations such as India during 2024, hint at better days to come. But no one’s out of the woods yet, it said. India enjoyed a surge in investment in dollars, up 215 per cent over $806 million the previous year and the number of deals were up 27 per cent at 218. The median deal size was $2.3 million, up 101 per cent year-on-year (y-o-y), the report said.
Upstream categories
Funding in the upstream categories such as ag marketplaces and fintech once again led investments for the upstream start-ups with investments driven by the sheer number of small holder farmers in the country, the report said. SarvaGram was the top funded upstream company raising $67 million in Series D funding in the Agmarket Places and Fintech category. However, the largest deal was in downstream category in the eGroceries space with Zepto raising $665 million, followed by Rebel Foods raising $210 million in the cloud retail infrastructure space. Omnivore was the top investor in India with 11 deals, followed by Villgro with 10 deals.
“It’s great to see that the recovery has begun in global agri foodtech. Thankfully, the Indian story has been even stronger, with India outperforming every other developing market in year-on-year growth of agri foodtech funding. We expect this trend to improve further in 2025, as growth-stage agri food companies in India raise large pre-IPO rounds,” Mark Kahn, managing partner, Omnivore told businessline.
In 2024, India was the only developing market to see an increase in agri foodtech investment. India continues to lead the developing world in terms of both deal totals and number of deals — hardly surprising in a country home to 18% of the global population, AgFunder said.
34 deals in agmarketplaces
Category wise, there were 34 deals in the Agmarketplaces and Fintech with funding of $220 million registering an increase of 89 per cent y-o-y , followed by 17 deals in the Farm Robotics, Mechanisation and Farm Equipment space with $91 million investments.
Some 14 deals in the bioenergy and biomaterials with investments of $73 million, followed by 24 deals in farm management software, sensing and IoT with funding of $36 million. Funding in midstream technologies stood at $256 million involving some 32 deals during the year.
