India is the largest single destination for agricultural technology investment among emerging markets, drawing $2.1 billion between 2023 and the third quarter of 2025, more than three times as much as second-placed Brazil, according to a report from AgBase.
AgBase is backed by the Gates Foundation and the UK's Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office and produced the report with Briter and Mercy Corps AgriFin. "AgTech Investment in Emerging Markets 2025" tracked more than $4.39 billion in funding across 900-plus deals and 700-plus companies in 17 countries in Africa, Latin America, South Asia and Southeast Asia. After India and Brazil ($663.3 million) came Indonesia ($453.1 million), Kenya ($281.3 million) and Singapore ($254.4 million).
The report says agtech's recovery from the 2021-2023 funding correction has lagged the wider startup market. It credits India's lead to sophisticated capital markets and to policy such as the Digital Agriculture Mission and AgriStack, part of a shift by governments from donor-led pilots to national digital agriculture systems.
The models best placed to succeed, it finds, are "phygital": digital platforms combined with field agents, logistics and cold storage rather than apps alone, earning money further down the value chain instead of charging farmers. "To build scalable models, you have to monetise beyond the farmer," said Francisco Jardim, managing partner at SP Ventures.
Deal sizes remain modest across emerging markets. In South Asia, equity made up about two-thirds of deals and nearly 80 percent of funding value. Exits are the tightest constraint everywhere, though South Asia is the only region with repeatable exit routes. The authors warn against treating emerging-market agtech as one story and urge funders to diagnose each market's own constraints before acting.
Source: Global Agriculture
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