Budget 2024: Government to Boost Agritech with Vegetable Supply Chain Startups

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced on July 23 that the government will promote startups in the vegetable supply chain to enhance the agritech sector. “We will support farmer producer organizations, cooperatives, and startups in vegetable supply chains, including connectivity, storage, and marketing through digital public infrastructure for agriculture,” she said.

A year-long pilot of the digital public infrastructure (DPI) for agriculture will be followed by its rollout this fiscal. This DPI will facilitate a crop survey in 400 districts during the ongoing Kharif season and will collect details of 6 crore farmers and their land parcels for the farm and land registry. Additionally, the DPI will be used to offer Kisan credit cards to farmers.

The FM also proposed developing DPI applications for sectors such as credit, e-commerce, education, health, law, logistics, MSME, services delivery, and urban governance. The Budget includes other announcements for startups, such as abolishing angel tax and reducing TDS for e-commerce platforms from 1% to 0.1%.