How BioPrime Helps Farmers To Save Crops In Weather Uncertainty

India’s farms are no stranger to weather volatility, but the nature of instability is changing with erratic monsoons, prolonged heatwaves and unseasonal cold spells are fast turning into the norm. If the unpredictability of the weather leaves farmers a worried lot, what renders them helpless is the sheer lack of actionable solutions. Weather advisories can signal what’s coming but the bigger question is how to protect crops once such adversities are unleashed. 

The race to find a solution is driving a structural transition in the field of agriculture with the country’s $165.93 Mn biofertiliser market on course to reach $253.09 Mn by 2031 and the $230.68 Mn biostimulants market accelerating to scale $365.38 Mn by the same year. Policy support, rising fertiliser costs and global demand for residue-free produce are driving the adoption of biological inputs, positioning them as a key lever in building climate-resilient farming systems. 

Dr Renuka Diwan, Dr Amit Shinde and Dr Shekhar Bhosle wanted to leverage this opportunity through BioPrime. The Pune-based firm is designed to build biological agri inputs such as sprays and irrigation additives using biochemicals and microbes to help crops withstand the climatic stress while improving yield quality and soil health. 

The agritech startup at its core, works with secondary metabolites – compounds that plants naturally produce to defend themselves such as alkaloids, terpenes, amines, glucosinolates, quinones, phenolics and peptides, and uses them to prime crops in advance, enabling them to better survive adverse conditions.

BioPrime has developed a patented tech stack, comprising SNIPR (biomolecules) and BioNexus (microbes), to deliver both immediate protection from adverse weather conditions and long-term soil health while reducing dependence on chemical fertilisers. It also offers soil restoration inputs and biological crop protection products such as bio-insecticides and bio-fungicides. 

“We grew three-fold year-on-year, and our losses from the previous year barely increased. We are now looking to become profitable next year, with a strong focus on international expansion,” Diwan told Inc42.

BioPrime has so far raised $8 Mn in funding, including a $6 Mn Series A round led by Belgium-based Edaphon, with participation from Omnivore and Inflexor Ventures. The startup has also tied up with global and domestic agri-input majors such as Yara, ICL Fertilizers, DCM Shriram and Insecticides India, while expanding its footprint across markets including the US, Brazil and Southeast Asia. 

A Shared Vision Kicks Off A Journey 

BioPrime’s origins trace back long before the company was incorporated. The three cofounders had known each other for over two decades. While Diwan and Shinde were batchmates in their master’s and PhD, Bhosle was their senior in the same lab. But, after completing their research, their careers diverged. Shinde moved into industrial R&D at Kumar Florist, Bhosle into the startup ecosystem, and Diwan into academia, specialising in genetic engineering. 

Despite building deep expertise across research, industry and incubation, the founders felt their work remained confined to papers, patents and controlled lab environments, far away from real-world agricultural challenges. “The kind of knowledge we had was getting restricted to just patents or publications. We wanted to create a larger, more tangible impact,” Diwan told Inc42. 

To bridge that gap, the founders stepped into the field. Starting with a small consulting setup, they worked across the agricultural value chain starting from seed companies and nurseries to agri-input and biotechnology firms, to understand the ecosystem before building for it. Within a year, clear patterns began to emerge, particularly around the limitations of existing agri-input solutions.

They spotted a clear dearth in the system. It was the lack of effective solutions to help the farmers tackle climate-induced stress. While awareness of climate risks was rising, the tools available to farmers remained either slow, inconsistent or chemical heavy. This pointed to an opportunity to build faster, more reliable and sustainable alternatives.

This insight led to the inception of BioPrime in 2016. Early on, the founders also recognised the structural constraints of building a biotech startup in India. With support from Pune’s Venture Center and its director Dr Premnath Venugopalan, BioPrime secured government-backed grants and incubation support, enabling it to set up the initial R&D and prototyping in a capital-intensive sector.

But, with time, more and more challenges began unfolding. 

From Farmer Scepticism To Field Validation

When BioPrime began operations in 2016, large swathes of India were scorched by severe heatwaves of an El Niño year. With little runway, the team rushed an initial formulation to the market, expecting curiosity. But, they were greeted with scepticism, instead.

Convincing even a handful of farmers proved difficult. “I would love to say it was our science that convinced them, but it wasn’t. It was sheer relentlessness. We just kept showing up in their fields, day after day,” Diwan said. The breakthrough came when one farmer, watching his crop perishing, agreed to test the product on the weakest rows on his field. Within days, the difference was visible. While untreated crops wilted, the treated section held up through harvest.

That early win became BioPrime’s first proof point, unlocking word-of-mouth adoption in clusters like Narayangaon near Pune. 

This ‘seeing is believing’ approach became central to BioPrime’s adoption strategy. Instead of top-down selling, the company set up demo farms where farmers could compare treated and untreated crops through live harvests and side-by-side yield calculations. For more progressive farmers, the pitch centred on profitability, quality and long-term soil health. For others, visible outcomes such as healthier crops, longer shelf life and even advance trader interest drove adoption.

However, scaling the solution beyond one region brought in fresh hurdles. The initial product was designed for drip irrigation, while much of Indian agriculture is rain-fed. “We realised very quickly that a solution built for one kind of farming practice would not work everywhere,” said Diwan. BioPrime responded by diversifying formats, including sprayable and granule-based applications, making its products usable across regions like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand.

Farmer feedback also began shaping the product roadmap. Demand shifted towards improving crop quality and consistency, factors directly linked to market pricing. “A-grade produce can fetch almost twice the price of lower-grade output. Even small improvements in quality can significantly change farmer income,” Diwan noted.

This pushed BioPrime to expand beyond single-problem solutions towards a platform approach. 

Instead of building products in isolation, each molecule or microbe was evaluated for multiple use cases, from stress tolerance to nutrient efficiency and crop protection, enabling faster portfolio expansion while keeping development costs in check.

A Biology-First Engine For Climate Resilience

At its core, BioPrime is built on a simple belief that biological solutions will only scale if they match the speed and reliability of chemical inputs. Early feedback from farmers made this clear, biologicals were often seen as slow, inconsistent and unpredictable. “If it doesn’t work fast and if it doesn’t work every time, we won’t use it,” Diwan said. Addressing this meant rethinking how such products are discovered and developed. BioPrime built a dual-layered platform, combining biomolecules and microbes for immediate and long-term results. 

The first layer, SNIPR, is its patented biomolecule discovery platform. It identifies and extracts natural defence signals from plants, algae and microorganisms, converting them into formulations that can be applied externally. Instead of reacting to stress, crops are primed in advance for conditions like heat, drought and erratic rainfall.

SNIPR can rapidly screen thousands of such biomolecules. The platform has evaluated over 17,000 leads, identifying hundreds that can improve plant performance. “We are decoding how plants respond to stress and then amplifying that response,” Diwan said. 

But, biomolecules alone were not enough. While they improved stress response, they did not fully address the underlying health of the plant ecosystem. This led to the development of BioNexus, a microbial platform designed to restore the natural microbial ecosystem that supports plant growth. 

BioNexus is a curated library of over 17,000 plant-associated microbes collected from across India’s diverse agroclimatic zones, including the Western Ghats, the Himalayas and the Northeast. The idea draws parallels from human health. “Just like our gut microbiome determines our overall health, plants too depend on a complex network of microbes for their fitness and resilience,” Diwan explained. Over time, excessive focus on yield and chemical inputs has weakened this natural system.

By reintroducing beneficial microbes, BioPrime aims to restore this balance. These microbes help plants absorb nutrients more efficiently, improve resistance to pests and diseases and enhance overall soil health, reducing long-term dependency on synthetic inputs. 

Together, SNIPR and BioNexus combine immediate, targeted intervention through biomolecules with long-term ecosystem restoration through microbes. 

Sowing The Seeds Of Future

BioPrime is not building a standalone distribution play. Instead, It positions itself as a partner to the broader agri-input ecosystem. “We don’t see ourselves competing with large agri-input companies. We see ourselves partnering with them,” Diwan said. 

That said, competition in biologicals is intensifying. Players like Sea6 Energy (seaweed-based inputs), Nutrienty Crop Care (fertilisers, micronutrients and biologicals) and Agrilogy Bioscience (precision agri and biologicals) are expanding their offerings. BioPrime’s edge lies in its R&D-led approach, combining biomolecule discovery (SNIPR) with microbial intelligence (BioNexus).

Geographically, the next phase of growth will be driven by international expansion. The startup has entered markets like the US, Brazil and Southeast Asia but scaling further will depend on navigating regulatory approvals. “A large part of our focus now is on building regulatory pathways across regions. Once that is in place, expansion becomes much faster,” Diwan said. The broader ambition is to build a ‘Made in India, Made for the World’ biological brand, especially in a market dominated by imports.

Operationally, BioPrime has grown nearly three times while keeping the losses in check, with investments largely directed towards regulatory expansion and IP development. 

The goal is to achieve profitability in the near term while continuing to invest in long-term capabilities. “From an operational standpoint, we are close to being profitable. The focus now is to cross that milestone while continuing to build for scale,” Diwan said.

At the same time, BioPrime has scaled its infrastructure, from an incubator lab to 5,000 Sq Ft of R&D facility, almost 10,000 Sq Ft of production facility along with dedicated facilities for storage, transportation and warehousing. Combined with its pan-India presence through channel partners and direct farmer validation loops, the company is gearing up to scale both its science and its reach. 

As the biologicals market expands globally, BioPrime is betting that the future of agriculture will not just be about higher yields but about building resilient systems with biology at the centre of that shift. 

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