By: ICN Bureau
Last updated : January 03, 2024 10:04 am
Through a harmonious blend of technology, appealing packaging and digital communication practices, the agrochemical sector is poised to play a pivotal role in shaping the future of agriculture
The agricultural sector has undergone a significant transformation, not only in terms of farming practices but also in the way agrochemicals are branded, packaged, and delivered. The intersection of technology, sustainability, and consumer demand has spurred a wave of innovations that are reshaping the agrochemical industry.
Industry leaders recently discussed the current trends at the fifth session, ‘Innovations in Branding, Packaging, and Delivery Systems’ of AgroChem Summit 2023 organized by the Indian Chemical News in New Delhi on December 15, 2023. The session was moderated by Pravin Prashant, Editor, Indian Chemical News.
Creating brand awareness on a commercial product is a necessity but there is a significant change in how branding is happening in agrochemicals, says Ankur Singh, Vice President & Head Strategy, DCM Shriram Limited.
“The geographical reach as the brand awareness is concerned at least in the last five years, especially post COVID, the regulations around the label, around the distribution of agrochemicals and as well as the packaging requirement at the users, they all have changed significantly. There is of course the pressure from the regulatory bodies, especially from Europe. The broader awareness about agrochemical, its efficacies and of course its side effects had to be discussed in a much wider forum rather than just to end consumer.”
“The companies want their customers to speak up for themselves and become spokespersons about the efficacy of their products and safe handling. Both in terms of companies informing stakeholders which is beyond their core consumer through social media campaigns and of course making their channel partners, farmers, end users speaking for themselves. This is how they bundle it as a strategy and put it in the branding and actually it has now become a part of the communication,” adds Singh.
Explaining what branding means in the agriculture industry, Saumendra Kumar Nayak, Lead-Agribusiness Strategy, PI Industries Limited says, “Brand is not something that we communicate to our customers or in this case the farmers. It is something that the farmer speaks about your product, what he perceives, what he actually experiences from your product. And the need for this branding comes when channel distribution or dealers and distributors are trickling down up to the farmer level. Just to give an example, there are like 330 molecules or active ingredients and 859 formulations which are registered in India. The number of brands has been multiplying multifold and it has become like an entire cluster.”
“When it comes to branding, the first thing is to focus on packaging as well. One element of branding is that we also communicate a lot of things for packaging and it is not just a medium of delivering a product but communication also. Apart from registering the bottle shape, the bottle is also simplified in terms of colours as it is more appealing to the farmers. The icons on the bottles, shape of the bottle are always appreciated by the farmer and dealer, and even the channel. In the words of late Steve Jobs, ‘Packaging is like a theatre, like you can create an entire story out of it. That's absolutely true,” adds Nayak.
Providing an overview on the agrochemical startup ecosystem, Ajay Kakra, Managing Partner, JU Agri Innovation Venture says, “When you look at the startup ecosystem, the government has invested this much amount of money in the last five years. But you have to look at it from a complete life cycle of a startup. It requires some bit of money at a very early stage and that’s where the government’s intervention is coming. So that’s primarily in terms of incubation parts. So government intervention is at a stage when they are very young, when they are trying to make a minimum viable product (MVP). They are trying to refine it and get incubated. At that stage the government provides 25-30 lakhs in different incubations under different incubation schemes.”
“Going ahead in their journey, they start attracting the angel investors and then after that comes the role of ventures like us getting into the picture and then comes the venture capital firms (VCs). Startups either perish or they become sluggish in this phase and that is where I believe that sort of ecosystem needs to mature. We need to provide them with more information and access. In general terms, security for their businesses. My suggestion here is that this sort of ecosystem is very buoyant but for entrepreneurs to be very successful in the market, we need to have very smart founders. We need to have support in terms of financing, in terms of alternate channels for marketing and in terms of a lot of data points so that they can survive on their own. Lot of it depends on secondary sources for data or financing,” adds Kakra.
Talking about the relevance of digital marketplace for agrochemicals, Deepak Verma, Domain Lead Agriculture, Open network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) says: “We are a Government of India supported initiative with the aim to democratize e-commerce, make it available to all segments of society, to all geographies, to all products and technically it is a network of e-commerce application, If you want to experience the ONDC, you will have to log into certain applications. What enables different applications to talk to each other if a farmer is one particular application? The input rate is largely physically dependent on diesel dealers, retailers, and the marketing is dependent on leaflets and labels on the bottle. But going forward it will be more digital in nature overall.”
“We are already in discussion with some 17 Agri input companies which are coming live on the network and it will enable farmers to use these inputs from any of the applications. I believe the more and more digital transactions will increase our dependence on physical branding. Another problem with the physical system is that the visibility stops at dealers and retailers. When you have a digital system that pinpoints who is actually using that chemical then through these integrated systems you can have an overall data view which can actually give you insights into what results are being obtained,” adds Verma.
The AgroChem Summit 2023 themed, ‘Boosting Production Through Sustainable Agriculture Practices’, witnessed attendance by stalwarts and other stakeholders from the agrochemical sector across India.
The Summit was supported by the Department of Chemicals and Petrochemicals, Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers, Government of India. Gold partners of the summit were Godrej Agrovet Ltd., SML Ltd., and Somaiya Vidyavihar University.
Industry association supporting AgroChem Summit 2023 included Agro Chem Federation of India (ACFI); Crop Care Federation of India (CCFI); Crop Life India (CLI); Pesticides Manufacturers & Formulators Association of India (PFFAI); and Biological Agri Solutions Association of India (BASAI).