India startups seek high-tech solutions to colossal food waste

A farm worker harvests maize crop in a field on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, India, in February 2019. — Reuters

NEW DELHI: Startups and venture capital are pouring into what might seem an unlikely place: India's vast, outdated agriculture industry.

Seizing on controversial new deregulation, entrepreneurs are selling farmers apps to connect them to big buyers nationwide and using artificial intelligence (AI) to improve the rickety supply chains that lose one-fourth of India's produce to wastage.