India Tops $4.39 Billion Emerging-Market AgTech Funding

28 October 2026, Mumbai: India has emerged as the largest single destination for AgTech capital among emerging markets, drawing $2.1 billion between 2023 and the third quarter of 2025, more than three times the amount raised by Brazil, the second-placed market, according to a new report from AgBase, an initiative backed by the Gates Foundation and the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), produced in partnership with Briter and Mercy Corps AgriFin.

The report, “AgTech Investment in Emerging Markets 2025,” tracked more than $4.39 billion in AgTech funding across 900-plus deals and 700-plus companies in 17 countries spanning Africa, Latin America, South Asia and Southeast Asia. India’s total placed it well ahead of Brazil ($663.3 million), Indonesia ($453.1 million), Kenya ($281.3 million) and Singapore ($254.4 million), which rounded out the top five markets.

Top Solution Categories by Region (Share of total funding)

The findings arrive as global venture funding continues to recover unevenly from the 2021-2023 correction. While overall startup funding has begun stabilising, the report found that AgTech’s recovery has lagged, weighed down by longer sales cycles, exposure to climate and commodity risk, and heavier dependence on physical infrastructure than most tech sectors. Contracting concessional finance, including cuts to major bilateral donor programmes, has narrowed the pool of risk-tolerant capital available to early-stage ventures, even as sovereign, local venture and corporate capital have stepped in to fill some of the gap.

Why India and Brazil pull ahead

The report groups markets under its “Investable Frontier” framework based on underlying conditions such as digital infrastructure, regulatory clarity, capital market depth and skilled talent. It finds that India and Brazil have the highest share of commercial investors, attributing this investor mix to stronger enabling conditions for commercial investment rather than concessional or catalytic funding alone.

The Investable Frontier – Five Market Profiles

“India’s Agtech ecosystem benefits from a 30-year head start powered by diaspora ties to Silicon Valley, a government fund-of-funds that catalysed domestic angel and seed VC firms, and a mature capital stack featuring active public IPO markets and major global private equity firms,” notes Mark Kahn, managing partner at VC firm Omnivore. 

India and Brazil, the report notes, combine strong foundational enablers with sophisticated capital markets, which together lower structural costs and risk for investors and make repeat commercial investment viable.

Government policy has reinforced that position. The report points to India’s Digital Agriculture Mission and AgriStack as examples of a broader shift among governments in the sector, from fragmented, donor-led pilots toward sovereign, system-level digital agriculture architecture, alongside comparable moves such as Brazil’s Plano Safra and ABC+ Low-Carbon Agriculture Plan, Morocco’s Génération Green 2020-2030 strategy, and Indonesia’s digital food-security monitoring systems.

Business models best positioned to succeed in markets like India, the report finds, are increasingly “phygital,” combining digital platforms with physical operations such as field agent networks, logistics and cold storage, rather than relying on asset-light apps alone. It also flags a shift away from user-count metrics toward monetisation from existing margin pools further down the value chain, citing dairy platforms in India as an example of models that tap processor and retail margins rather than charging farmers directly.

“To build scalable models, you have to monetise beyond the farmer, capturing value across supply chain logistics, inputs, and financing rather than charging direct fees that ruin unit economics,” notes Francisco Jardim, managing partner at SP Ventures. 

Deal sizes stay small, exits remain scarce

Despite India’s scale advantage, the report found AgTech deal sizes across all emerging markets remain modest overall. South Asia showed a more balanced spread across deal sizes than Africa or Latin America, where transactions below $1 million dominate, but equity still accounted for roughly two-thirds of South Asian deals and nearly 80% of funding value, complemented by grants, debt and blended structures at earlier stages.

The report also flagged exit pathways as the tightest constraint across all 17 markets, limiting the ability of AgTech ecosystems to cycle capital back to investors and attract fresh commercial funding. South Asia stands out as the only region with repeatable, multi-modal exit pathways, while exit conditions remain more constrained across other markets. It cautioned against treating emerging-market AgTech as a single story, arguing that capital structures, business models and market maturity now diverge sharply across regions, and even within them, that a uniform investment strategy is likely to misfire.

For policymakers and funders, the report’s authors argue the priority is diagnosing each market’s specific constraints, whether physical infrastructure, policy support or capital market depth, before designing interventions, rather than applying interventions that worked elsewhere.

The full report, AgTech Investment in Emerging Markets 2025, can be accessed at intelligence.agbase.briter.co.

About Briter

Briter is a research and business intelligence firm focused on emerging markets.
At its core is Briter Intelligence, a proprietary data platform tracking companies, investors, and capital flows across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Building on this data foundation, Briter delivers tailored regional and sector analyses, market mappings, and bespoke research to help organisations make informed decisions across high-growth regions, whether they’re deploying capital, raising investment, or identifying new opportunities.

AgBase is Briter’s sector-specific programme focused on agtech and foodtech ecosystems across emerging markets. It provides structured research and data on funders, deal flows, sector dynamics, and investment trends, offering a comprehensive view of capital activity and market development.

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