Aiming at Indonesia and Vietnam, Startup Agritech Rize Wants to Decarbonize Rice Cultivation

Rize targeting Indonesia and Vietnam as the first market in presenting integrated solutions to decarbonize rice cultivation. Rize is an agritech startup recently launched by Temasek, Wavemaker Impact, Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV), and GenZero.

Currently, Rize is led by Dhruv Sawhney as CEO. He was previously COO at nuture.farm, a digital platform that facilitates sustainable agriculture in India. He claims, nurture.farm has engaged more than 2,5 million farmers and 100.000 traders, and is leading one of India's largest programs to stop crop residue burning.

As well as having direct experience in decarbonizing the rice value chain, Dhruv is the founder of a startup that built and sold his food supply chain business to Zomato in 2018.

"After enteric emissions, rice is the second largest contributor to agricultural emissions globally. The technology to decarbonize rice cultivation already exists, but requires changes in farmer behavior," said Dhruv.

"Dhruv's wealth of experience has been critical in driving Rize's vision as a scalable and sustainable platform to decarbonize rice cultivation," said Rize Board Member of Wavemaker Impact Marie Cheong.

For your information, Wavemaker Impact is a climate technology development company supported by venture capital companies in Southeast Asia. eFishery is a startup from Indonesia that was funded by Wavemaker Impact.

Meanwhile, BEV was founded by Bill Gates and supported by a number of world's leading business leaders. BEVs have raised over $2 billion in bonded capital to support innovative companies that are leading the world towards emissions net zero.

Aim for Indonesia and Vietnam

Rize targets Asia and Southeast Asia with Indonesia and Vietnam as its first market targets. It said it already has a local team. Rize claims to have conducted trials in both countries with positive initial results.

As a staple crop for more than half of the world's population, global demand for rice is expected to increase by 50% by 2050, Rize is building a platform to identify, and implement the most effective strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in rice cultivation. Rize also seeks to provide the right economic incentives to encourage the adoption of sustainable cultivation techniques.

"Rice is also the main source of methane emissions in Southeast Asia, responsible for up to 33% of the region's methane emissions. Methane has 80 times more global warming potential than carbon dioxide," he said.

Across Asia, it is recorded that the livelihoods of 400 million people in 144 million smallholder farmers depend on rice, with the average size of farms ranging from 0,5 to 2 hectares. However, to date there are still significant yield gaps, and in Southeast Asia, with rice production per hectare lagging behind high-producing countries by around 40%.

In recent years, the agricultural sector in Indonesia has undergone a significant transformation with the emergence of the agritech platform. This platform combines technology, data and innovation to revolutionize traditional agriculture and increase productivity in the agricultural landscape.

Utilization of technological solutions is believed to help empower farmers, improve supply chain efficiency, and encourage sustainable agricultural practices. So far, the agritech startups that are currently present in Indonesia include, If ever, Eratani, Elevarm, MarketMicro, beleaf, Food Net, Koltiva, glife, Agridesaand Gokomodo.