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The Green Revolution: Anand Chandra, Co-Founder & Executive Director, Arya.ag on Fixing India’s Agri Gaps with Tech
78 years after independence, India has risen as a global tech super-power, yet the fields that feed the nation still struggle with age-old challenges; broken supply chains, informal credit systems, and post-harvest losses. What’s the value of technological progress if it fails to reach the farmers who form the backbone of our economy?
By converting stored grain into digital asset, enabling instant credit, and deploying AI, IoT, and satellite intelligence across rural geographies, Arya.ag is proving that technology can work for those who need it the most. Anand Chandra, Co-Founder & Executive Director, Arya.ag shares how they’re solving India’s deepest agri challenges with practical, problem-first innovations.
How does Arya.ag use AI, IoT, and satellite data across the grain value chain and what makes your tech deployment accurate across diverse geographies and crops in rural India?
Arya.ag integrates technology where it creates the most practical value in the agricultural supply chain. Satellite imagery is a key layer in our stack. It enables predictive analytics on crop health, weather-related risks, and biotic stress. These insights directly inform our procurement planning and advisory services. For example, we can flag early warning signs of crop failure or pest outbreaks, allowing farmers and buyers to make timely decisions.
AI is used for quality grading of grains and for risk scoring that determines a farmer’s credit eligibility. IoT systems are embedded into our hermetic storage infrastructure to support real-time surveillance and inventory management, particularly in warehouses close to the farm.
What ensures accuracy is how these technologies are layered and localised. We operate across 11,000 near-farm storage points in 425 districts, covering 21 states. The models we use are trained using regional parameters and adapted to local cropping cycles and behaviour. This is not a one-size-fits-all deployment. The stack evolves with geography, making it both context-aware and scalable.
By turning grain into digital assets, how is Arya.ag reshaping farmer access to credit and what does this mean for financial inclusion at scale?
Once produce enters our storage network, it is graded, weighed, and converted into an electronic balance. This balance is a digital representation of value that can be offered as collateral for credit or sold through our platform. This method unlocks access to formal finance without relying on land records, income statements, or traditional credit scores. More than 40 percent of our borrowers are accessing formal finance for the first time. Crucially, this creates an alternative to informal financial systems. Farmers no longer need to depend on local traders or commission agents for liquidity. With digital visibility and secure collateral, they can take loans based on stored produce and choose when to sell. The credit process is designed for speed and transparency. Disbursement happens in minutes, repayments are tied to commodity sales, and all transactions are visible to stakeholders. It is a system that brings financial inclusion to fragmented, underbanked regions, while also de-risking credit by focusing on the commodity rather than the farmer alone.
What is one AI or IoT application that surprised you with its impact, and how are these insights actually enabling farmers or partners on the ground?
Biotic stress detection through satellite imagery has been one of the most impactful use cases. We piloted this capability in select districts through our FPO partners, aiming to improve crop visibility. During one cycle, the system flagged early-stage pest risks in maize before they were visible on the ground. This advisory was delivered through our app and verified by our field teams. The FPO acted on the alert, which helped farmers intervene early and significantly reduce crop losses.
What made this solution stand out was not just the outcome but the cost at which it was delivered. Satellite-based insights have typically been expensive or limited to large enterprises. We have made this capability available at a price rural institutions can afford. That combination of affordability, speed, and accuracy makes it practical for wide-scale deployment.
It also reinforced an important lesson. Technology only creates value when insights are timely, actionable, and delivered through a trusted interface that connects digital systems to people on the ground.
With poor connectivity and low digital trust in rural India, what is the most realistic way to scale agritech, and where are policymakers or innovators missing the mark?
The most realistic path to scale is to decouple digital outcomes from digital literacy. Farmers do not need to become full-time app users. What they need is a consistent experience where technology works seamlessly in the background, delivering visible benefits.
This is where human-led, tech-enabled models work well. A warehouse operator helping a farmer access finance or an FPO lead executing a trade creates more confidence than a digital-only system. Trust builds when the farmer sees the grain being weighed, tagged, and recorded as an asset they can track and use.
Affordability is another critical factor. As we saw with satellite-based pest alerts, the cost at which a solution is available determines whether it can move beyond pilot projects. Technologies that are affordable, modular, and localised are the ones that will scale.
Most importantly, the agritech sector must shift from a solution-first mindset to a problem-solving approach. The focus should be on solving specific, real-world problems, such as post-harvest loss, delayed payments, or access to working capital. When technology addresses pain points rather than pushing pre-built products, adoption becomes organic and sustainable.
How can India build a rural workforce that is fluent in both agriculture and technology, and how can we encourage global adoption?
India can build an agri-tech fluent workforce not just through training programs but by creating roles where agriculture and technology are integrated. We have seen this with warehouse managers, sourcing leads, FPO tech operators, and credit enablers who earn by enabling farmers through digital tools.
This alignment of incentives drives faster learning and adoption. Rural India is not unfamiliar with technology. When there is visible utility and income opportunity, adoption is fast. For instance, the rapid rise of UPI payments among vegetable vendors and rickshaw drivers happened because it solved a real-world problem in a simple, cost-free way. Agri-tech will follow a similar path. The more a tool improves efficiency, reduces loss, or increases income, the more quickly it will be embraced even in low-literacy or low-connectivity environments.
On the global front, India has an opportunity to set a benchmark. Countries in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America face similar post-harvest and financial access challenges. If India can demonstrate that decentralised infrastructure, tech-led visibility, and commodity-backed finance can succeed in harsh conditions, it provides a practical model for others to adopt.
