Agritech Partnership Marks Early Win for New Zealand-India Business Initiative

A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between QLBS Executive Chair Keith Phillips and Map My Crop Founder and CEO Swapnil "Neal" Jadhav was signed on June 5, marking an early outcome of a week-long visit to New Zealand by ten Indian agribusiness entrepreneurs under the Asia New Zealand Foundation's New Zealand India Entrepreneurship Initiative (NZIEI).

The agreement was formalised at the Auckland Business Chamber following the NZIEI forum.

The partnership brings together QLBS, a New Zealand-based compliance and visibility platform already integrated into Zespri's kiwifruit supply chain, and Map My Crop, an Indian agritech company with operations in more than 100 countries. Through the collaboration, the two companies aim to explore opportunities to strengthen farm traceability, compliance, and digital innovation across agricultural supply chains.

Map My Crop uses satellite imagery, drones, AI, and mobile connectivity to monitor farmland, generate crop advisories in multiple languages, and process agricultural data at scale.

The deal cuts to the heart of what both companies need from the other. QLBS brings a proven export compliance architecture built to GlobalG.A.P. standards, the global benchmark for good agricultural practice, already embedded in New Zealand's most demanding horticultural supply chains. Map My Crop brings reach into the Indian market, deep local data capability, and the ability to scale technology across a farming sector where individual operators are counted in hundreds of millions.

"We were looking for a GlobalG.A.P. partner for eight to nine months across the world," said Jadhav, "and we didn't imagine we would find that in New Zealand, in another corner of the world."

The connection itself came about through the Asia New Zealand Foundation.

In an interview with Asia Media Centre, Phillips said he had been conducting his own research into potential partners when the delegation was flagged to him. "When it was pointed out to me that I should be talking to the Foundation and being part of this thing, I did a search of the list of people that are coming down, and I saw Map My Crop, and I said, 'We've got to be talking to these guys.'"

"So the Foundation absolutely was the catalyst in making the physical connection between the two players who'd already been thinking about that, which is why we were able to move very quickly and produce an MOU on day one of the tour," he added.

Where Trade Meets Business

The signing comes weeks after New Zealand and India formalised a free trade agreement, a deal that, once ratified, will eliminate tariffs on 95 percent of New Zealand's current exports to India.

Speaking at the forum, Asia New Zealand Foundation Director of Business and Entrepreneurship Tim McCready emphasised the agreement was only one part of the equation.

"A free trade agreement is great and it shows great intent, but what really makes things happen is people," he said.

For QLBS Executive Chair Keith Phillips, the partnership with Map My Crop reflects a longer-term ambition to expand the company's technology into one of the world's largest agricultural markets.

India has more than 1.4 billion people and, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), around 70 percent of rural households remain primarily dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods. The sector is dominated by smallholders with fragmented land holdings.

Phillips sees the cooperative sector as the most practical entry point for scaling technology. "2025 was the year of the cooperative," he said. "The 14,000 cooperatives in India, if you empower those cooperatives to work on their farms, you're actually starting to move."

The opportunity is significant, but navigating the market requires local knowledge and scale that New Zealand companies often lack.

"You cannot move into India without really understanding the market, without a local partner," Phillips said. "Map My Crop goes beyond that. It's got a global footprint in over 100 countries. We're a smart company dealing in Australia and New Zealand and little patches here and there. Scaling up from New Zealand is very difficult without a technology partner of that kind."

The partnership is also rooted in a shared view of where agricultural compliance is headed. Phillips argues the global certification and compliance industry, currently dominated by companies such as SGS and Bureau Veritas, is overdue for technological disruption.

"They are stuck in the last century in terms of the usage of technology," he said. "The world of the future is going to be one in which there's not an auditor coming in once a year and doing an audit. It continues 24 by 7 because the satellite is passing every day and you're getting information from the internet of things, whether it be the tractors or the ploughs or the cows themselves."

Scale as an advantage

Map My Crop's appeal lies not only in its access to the Indian market, but also in the scale at which it operates.

"We are onboarding 950 million hectares of new land every month," Jadhav said. "We've actually built over 4,000 different AI models, there's a lot of learning our system has."

The platform delivers precision recommendations across radically different soil types, crops and climatic zones.

"I need local profiling, I need local data collections to adapt to these conditions," he said. "That's a layer, once you start building it, that would allow precision to increase."

That experience operating across diverse agricultural environments is one of the reasons QLBS sees value in the partnership.

The collaboration is already expected to extend beyond India.

"We already have meetings lined up with a few other customers, two large enterprises, and a farming association," Jadhav said. "We are kicking off a commercial pilot project in a few weeks. You never know, I might have an office soon in New Zealand."

Map My Crop CEO Swapnil "Neal" Jadhav said the company's partnership with New Zealand-based QLBS will extend beyond India, with opportunities across Europe and Southeast Asia. Photo: Carla Teng-Westergaard/AMC.

New Zealand's competitive position

New Zealand's claim to relevance in Indian agritech lies not in the size of its agricultural sector, but in the quality of the export systems it has built around it.

As a small, trade-dependent economy, New Zealand has spent decades constructing traceability, food safety, and compliance infrastructure that meets the most demanding international standards. That gives New Zealand companies a practical demonstration of what it looks like to connect farm-level data to global market requirements, exactly the problem India is now trying to solve at vastly greater scale.

"One of the reasons India really likes the New Zealand solutions is because we're an export country to begin with," said Phillips. "We've already embedded these systems."

That export orientation also generates credibility with Indian buyers and regulators looking for internationally recognised certification frameworks. For Map My Crop, the ability to pair its data platform with GlobalG.A.P.-certified compliance, via QLBS, opens a pathway to premium export markets for its clients that the company had been unable to access without a credible Western certification partner.

Jadhav is direct about what his company gets from the arrangement beyond market access.

"That's something we want to learn from New Zealand. How are you guys doing a better job in terms of exporting in spite of having a smaller land compared to India? Those are some of the best practices we want to get implemented through these MoUs," he said.

"It's beneficial for both sides, they are getting access to market, but we are also getting some of the best practices. Both countries get success at the end of it," he added.

Both Phillips and Jadhav are measured about what the MoU will deliver and when. The commercial return on the partnership has yet to be quantified, but both believe the collaboration brings together complementary strengths.

"The sum is greater than the parts," Phillips said. "We have a clear sense of that. The ROI (return of investment), we don't understand yet. The next steps are to identify target companies and fuse the data together, not so much fusing the technologies as the data, and applying analytics to show what can be done."

The immediate focus is on translating the agreement into practical outcomes. Among the next steps is a business event planned for Mumbai later this year, aimed at bringing together stakeholders from both countries.

"Keith [Phillips] and I are also going to be hosting an event in October-November where we are calling up a few businesses from here, all the stakeholders in India, and we will be doing an event in Mumbai where all these people come and gather," Jadhav said.

While it remains too early to gauge the commercial impact of the partnership, the agreement reflects the type of business-to-business collaboration the NZIEI programme was designed to foster. It brings together New Zealand expertise in farm compliance and supply-chain visibility with an Indian agritech company that operates at global scale.

As New Zealand and India move closer to implementing a free trade agreement, partnerships such as the one between QLBS and Map My Crop may offer an indication of how businesses in both countries can work together to expand their reach, share expertise and explore new opportunities in the agriculture sector.

Beyond Market Access: India's Agritech Advantage

Discussions at the NZIEI forum also underscored that the exchange of value runs in both directions, and that New Zealand businesses should not assume they hold all the relevant expertise.

The Indian delegation brought with them a sophisticated understanding of how agritech is adopted in complex, low-income markets, knowledge that cannot easily be gleaned from market reports or industry briefings.

Speakers noted that technically strong products alone are not enough to succeed in India. Some European companies, they said, had entered the market with promising technologies but struggled to gain traction because they underestimated how adoption happens on the ground.

For technology to work at scale, it must fit into existing farming practices rather than requiring farmers to change their routines. Recommendations must be delivered in the right language, and support must be responsive.

Subhajit Sinha, founder and CEO of 4CLIMATE, said responsive customer service was a critical part of the value proposition.

"48 hours, whether you are in the northern part of India or the southern part, we resolve case in 48 hours, there is a commitment," he said.

That focus on localisation and scale helps explain why Indian agritech companies have developed capabilities that are increasingly attracting international interest.

The NZIEI forum was moderated by Brendan O'Connell, CEO of AgriTech NZ. Pictured (L–R): Swapnil Jadhav, CEO of Map My Crop; Subhajit Sinha, CEO of 4CLIMATE; and Amrita Mukher, Product Manager at Arogyam Medisoft Solution Pvt. Ltd. Photo: Carla Teng-Westergaard/AMC.

The NZIEI programme

The NZIEI is now in its second year. Run by the Asia New Zealand Foundation, the programme aims to build lasting connections between entrepreneurs and business leaders in New Zealand and India.

For some participants, those connections are already translating into commercial opportunities.

Rohan Ursal, who joined the inaugural delegation last year, has since introduced the New Zealand apple variety Rouge to the Indian market and is importing Royal Gala apples through his company, Purandar Highlands Farmers Producer Company.

The current delegation's week-long programme included visits to Auckland, Waikato, and Tauranga before culminating at Fieldays, New Zealand's largest agricultural event.

The Indian Consulate hosted a dedicated pavilion at Fieldays for the first time, underscoring growing agricultural and commercial engagement between New Zealand and India.

For the delegates, the visit was as much about understanding New Zealand's agricultural ecosystem as it was about exploring commercial opportunities. By bringing future industry leaders into direct contact with growers, exporters and innovators, the programme aims to build connections that can endure well beyond a single visit and support future collaboration between businesses in both countries.

-Asia Media Centre