Microsoft announces program to accelerate growth of agritech startups

NEW DELHI: Microsoft has announced the launch of a program for agritech startups in India. The program is designed to help startups build industry-specific solutions, scale and grow with access to deep technology, business and marketing resources.

This program offers tech and business enablement resources to help agritech startups innovate and scale fast. Startups can also get access to Azure FarmBeats, which can help them focus on core value-adds instead of the undifferentiated heavy lifting of data engineering. Available on the Azure Marketplace, Azure FarmBeats enables aggregation of agricultural datasets across providers and generation of actionable insights by building AI/ML models based on fused datasets.

“Agritech startup innovations are addressing some of our key challenges connected to agriculture and food production. The Microsoft for Agritech Startups program is among the early steps in our journey towards empowering these startups in India and transforming global agricultural practices,” said Sangeeta Bavi, Director, Startup Ecosystem, Microsoft India, in a statement.

Spread across three tiers, the program offers:

• All startups: Qualified seed to Series C startups can boost their businesses with Azure benefits , unlimited technical support and help with Azure Marketplace onboarding
• Co-sell startups: Startups with enterprise-ready solutions can scale with joint go-to-market strategies, technical support and new sales opportunities
• Co-create solutions: Startups that are looking to create digital agriculture solutions have the opportunity to co-build customized solutions with Azure FarmBeats without investing in deep data engineering resources.

The program aims to create a shared platform for learning and innovation.