Feeding Futures: Inclusive Livestock Services and effective last mile delivery through digital innovations in India

Livestock digitisation should be approached as a shared Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) pathway, building on India’s strong public digital foundations and established livestock service delivery systems, while aligning the growing ecosystem of start-ups developing modular solutions across nutrition, identification, finance, traceability, and service delivery. Policy and donor efforts should prioritise interoperability through common protocols and structured adoption mechanisms that reduce transaction costs for innovators, safeguard farmers’ rights, and strengthen accountability at the last mile. At the same time, digital livestock strategies must be designed to go beyond dairy, explicitly addressing under-served species and production systems. Persistent service gaps in mobile livestock systems, tribal geographies, and species such as small ruminants and camels reflect low digital literacy, weak infrastructure, and limited rural investment, and require deliberate corrective focus.

Inclusion must be made operational rather than aspirational, embedded through gender-responsive design, targeted outreach, and the use of community-based entry points. Digital services should be delivered through hybrid models that combine digital channels with extension systems, para-veterinarians, and other trusted intermediaries, rather than assuming app-first adoption. In pastoral and tribal contexts, solutions must be designed for mobility and clearly linked to tangible value and incentives. Achieving this at scale requires mobilising a complementary mix of actors and resources, with government institutions setting standards and governance frameworks; cooperatives anchoring trusted last-mile delivery; start-ups providing low-cost, modular applications; civil society ensuring participation and accountability; donors de-risking pilots and scale-up; and research partners validating approaches and supporting learning.