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Agro-chemical firm Dhanuka Agritech has said it is open to invest in more start-ups to support young entrepreneurs in the agriculture sector after making investments in two firms, including ₹30 crore in Gurugram-based agri drone manufacturer IoTechWorld Avigation for a minority stake in 2021.
“There are many young entrepreneurs who have great products and technologies. We are ready to support them,” Dhanuka group chairman R G Agarwal said on Wednesday. The company will invest in more such start-ups if it finds right opportunity, he added.
Agarwal said IoTechWorld has a lot of orders booked as drones are now increasingly being used in the agriculture sector for spraying pesticides and other activities. The other start-up where Dhanuka has invested makes IoT- and AI-based equipments for farm sector like soil sensor, he added.
Major challenges
Making a strong pitch for the integration of technological advancements, such as artificial intelligence with the farm sector, he said: “These technologies can help in identifying crop diseases and pests attack in advance, as well as assist in the efficient use of fertilisers and water management. With the help of these technologies, farmers can make informed decisions based on real-time data and plan their crops better.”
He also said the supply of spurious pesticides is one of the major challenges in the agrochemical sector as it hurts interests of both farmers and manufacturers. Dhanuka has already adopted QR code on all its products to check the menace of sales of spurious products in the parallel market, he said.
Since the use of substandard/spurious/smuggled/duplicate pesticides has an adverse impact on crop yields and farmers’ income, he urged the government to take stringent action against entities involved in the sale of such agri-inputs. Low-quality products fail to effectively control insects and pests, resulting in significant crop losses, he added.
Dhanuka Group, which has three manufacturing units located in Gujarat, Rajasthan, and Jammu and Kashmir, had a turnover of nearly ₹1,500 crore in the last fiscal.
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