India’s fresh produce industry is at the cusp of a technological transformation, but the journey is just beginning. According to a recent analysis by Shobhit Gupta, Founder and CEO of Superplum, while the global fresh produce market has technology embedded across its value chain, India’s fresh supply chain has yet to see any significant impact. The shift has begun, but the transformation is still in its infancy.
Structural Inefficiencies and Lack of Incentives
The Indian fresh produce ecosystem remains highly fragmented, with over 85% of fruits and vegetables passing through traditional wholesale markets. Gupta notes that no layer of the supply chain has had any real incentive to invest in pre-cooling, monitoring, traceability, or anything that does not deliver returns by the next day’s auction. Implementing solutions is equally challenging given half-hectare farms, fragmented cultivation practices, ambient transport, and the absence of anchor distribution centres. These structural constraints explain why technology has barely touched India’s fruit and vegetable supply chain.
Post-Harvest Technology Gains Momentum
The first visible shift today is in post-harvest management. Some companies have begun investing in scientific sorting, grading, packhouses, ripening chambers, and cold-chain logistics to reduce handling losses and deliver more consistent quality. These investments are critical because a significant share of fruit is still damaged between harvest and consumption due to poor infrastructure rather than low production. Technology is also bringing greater standardisation to quality. Computer vision systems can grade fruit based on size, colour, and external defects far more consistently than manual inspection, which remains the norm in India’s largest mandis.
Traceability Emerges as a Differentiator
Perhaps the most meaningful change is the emergence of traceability. Consumers can scan QR codes to see where a fruit was grown, the conditions under which it was harvested, and the safety test reports for each batch. As food safety becomes a growing consumer concern, traceability is likely to evolve from a premium feature into a baseline expectation for organised retail, with technology playing a central role.
Farm-Level Adoption Remains Limited
At the farm level, however, technology adoption remains limited. While tools such as weather advisories, digital crop monitoring, and farm management platforms are becoming more accessible, their use is largely confined to organised value chains that work directly with farmers. Scaling these solutions across India’s millions of smallholder farmers will require sustained investment, training, and stronger market linkages, supported by the government.
The Role of Integrated Ecosystems
Some companies have built these layers because no integrated ecosystem existed to plug into. They operate modular farm-level infrastructure, image-based detection systems at packhouses for quality assessment and chemical residue checks, automated ethylene ripening in place of carbide, and their own cold rooms and destination-city distribution centres. This approach, exemplified by Superplum, demonstrates that combining digital tools with physical infrastructure is key to overcoming fragmentation.
Outlook for Commodity Traders
For commodity traders and procurement teams, these developments signal a gradual shift toward standardisation and reduced wastage. As technology scales, the availability of consistent, traceable fresh produce from India could improve, potentially altering sourcing patterns. The next phase will not be driven by technology alone but by combining digital tools with investments in physical infrastructure and better supply chain integration, as Gupta emphasises. The greatest value of technology, he argues, lies not in replacing people but in reducing wastage, improving food safety, increasing transparency, and building a more efficient farm-to-consumer ecosystem.
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