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Expanding its role further, agri-tech focussed venture capital firm Omnivore has started helping its portfolio companies attract tech talent.
The VC firm has launched the Omnivore job board, which provides access to the latest available opportunities within its portfolio companies.
“It’s basically an aggregation of jobs coming out of our portfolio. We have about 40 portfolio companies. For a person looking for a job in agri-tech, there is a huge number of opportunities,” said Mark Kahn, Managing Partner, Omnivore.
About 31 portfolio companies have already posted some 257 jobs on the Omnivore job board that was launched recently.
‘Agri-tech is broadly doing fine’
Commenting on the outlook, Kahn said “For FY23-24. I think things are generally getting better. The overall Indian start-up ecosystem will start seeing things heat up in the latter half of the year. I think the agri-tech is broadly doing fine.”
In an earlier conversation with businessline in March, Kahn said that early-stage start-up valuations have come back to the 2018-19 level.
Omnivore invested in about six agri-tech start-ups during FY22-23 and did many more follow-on rounds into existing portfolio companies besides making two exits. Omnivore sold its stake in Eruvaka, which builds IoT solutions for aquaculture to Nutreco. It also sold its stake in MITRA to Mahindra Farm Equipment Sector.
“During FY22-23, most of our companies grew. If you ask operationally, it was great. From a valuation perspective, it was okay. We had some good products. For the sector as a whole, it was a tougher year.”
Easing liquidity conditions
The weak economic conditions impacted the start-up ecosystem globally during the year. However, Kahn expects the second half of FY24 to be better with easing liquidity conditions.
“We will continue to look for opportunities in agri-tech across deep tech, agri fintech, and agri food life sciences. Nothing much has changed for us,” he said hinting that there could be one or two more exits during the year.
Omnivore has invested approximately ₹800 crore in Indian agri-tech start-ups so far.
According to AgFunder and Omnivore’s fourth India AgriFood Startup Investment Report, India has overtaken China as Asia-Pacific’s biggest funder of agrifoodtech innovation, attracting record investment during April 2021 to March 2022.
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