Mr. Sanjiv Rangrass is a mentor, coach and a leading angel investor. Until June 2022, he was Group Head for R&D, Sustainability and Projects at ITC Ltd. and prior to this, he was the Chief Executive of the agri-businesses for ITC.
Mr. Rangrass spent over four decades at ITC in various capacities in the manufacturing and engineering functions. He was the GM, Manufacturing Operations and then a Member of the Executive Committee of the business. He also led ITC’s Sustainability 2.0 initiative focusing on channelizing collective action across the organization on carbon and water neutrality, mitigating and adapting to climate change including Agri value chains and steering the organization’s transition to the Circular Economy.
Mr. Rangrass is an Independent Director on the board of Bayer Crop Sciences Limited and also on the board of Zetwerk – a manufacturing unicorn. He is the co-founder of TAC (The Agri Collaboratory) – a “non-compete” not for profit, agriculture “Think and Do Tank” – helping build Digital Public Goods for agriculture in open source, along with the ecosystem and the government. He is also a Venture Partner in Capria Ventures.
Mr. Rangrass is a Mechanical Engineer from IIT Kanpur and graduated in 1982.
Meet Lakshmi, a smallholder farmer who has always struggled with the following fundamental questions: What seed should I plant? Will it work on my soil and in this weather? Which fertiliser should I apply and when? Will I get adequate water for my crop? Will I get a fair return? Traditionally, answers came late, through guesswork or middlemen.
But digitization is beginning to change her story.
Across the value chain, digital tools are creating a new landscape:
For Lakshmi, these changes translate into more confidence in her choices, lower risk of crop failure, and higher income. For the seed industry, it means reimagining its role—not just selling inputs but building long-term trust and resilience through data and service integration.
What makes this transformation possible is not technology alone, but the ecosystem of collaboration. Governments must build enabling digital infrastructure, businesses and startups must innovate with farmer-first solutions, and farmer institutions must ensure last-mile access.
The central message is clear: digitization is not simply about efficiency gains—it is about farmer agency. When farmers like Lakshmi can make informed, data-driven decisions, the entire value chain becomes more resilient, transparent, and inclusive.
By grounding the discussion in Lakshmi’s journey, this presentation will illustrate how digitization is already transforming agriculture—and why the agri and related businesses of tomorrow must put the smallholder farmer at its centre.
To support and accelerate this shift, the AgDx (Agricultural Digitalisation Index) has been created as a framework to measure how states and ecosystems are progressing in digitizing agriculture across the value chain. By benchmarking adoption and highlighting gaps, AgDx provides governments, businesses, and farmer organizations with an actionable compass for building the profitable, farmer-centric agri-business of tomorrow.
