FOA 197: Agritech in India

Future of Agriculture

• Episode: FOA 197: Agritech in India
• Website: Future of Agriculture
• Feed URL: http://aggrad.libsyn.com/rss
• Duration: 00:38:41
• Published: 2020-03-18 12:00

Mark Kahn is the Managing Partner of Omnivore, an India-based venture capital firm specifically focusing on funding entrepreneurs who are working to advance agriculture and food systems. Before this role, Mark served as the Executive Vice President of Strategy and Business Development at Godrej Agrovet and Strategy Manager of Syngenta. Mark earned his MBA from Harvard Business School and has extensive experience in rural marketing, corporate strategy, product development, research and development, mergers and acquisitions, and new business incubation.

Mark joins me today to discuss his business, Omnivore, and share his insights on the agritech landscape in India. He shares differences between the makeup of the agricultural sectors in India versus the United States, including how the family dynamic plays a role in certain Indian aspects of agriculture such as dairy farming. Mark also explains impact investing, and what Omnivore looks for when it comes to choosing which start-ups to invest in.

“Venture capital is like jet fuel. If you put jet fuel in a jet, the jet flies. If you put jet fuel in a Ford, the Ford explodes.” - Mark Kahn

This Week on The Future of Agriculture Podcast:

• What led Mark to build his venture capital firm Omnivore and some of the companies the firm has invested in.
• How to determine whether or not your company is suited for venture capital and the role of scalability in making this determination.
• Trends Mark has noticed with entrepreneurship and the talent dynamic in India’s start-up sector.
• The farming dynamic in India, including how many farmers there are in the country and the average farm size.
• How the Indian dairy industry works, the socio-cultural aspects of this, and the industries India ranks highly in.
• What leads many smallholder farmers to want to adopt new technologies and how accessibility plays a role.
• What impact funding and impact investing is, how it is a spectrum, and how it differs from ESG investing.
• Changes Mark has seen in agriculture, what he sees for the future of agriculture, and why Mark prefers “agritech” over “agtech.”
• Mark’s thoughts on exits and three ways exits could happen.

Resources Mentioned:

• Upstream Ag Insights

Connect with Mark Kahn

• Omnivore
• Mark Kahn on LinkedIn

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