The director of CSIR-NIIST, C. Anandharamakrishnan underscored the critical role agri-start-ups can play in achieving agricultural sustainability.
This was during his speech at the opening ceremony of a one-month ‘Agripreneurship Development Programme – Cohort VI’ held at Kerala Agricultural University (KAU) on Wednesday.
In his lecture, Prof. Anandharamakrishnan emphasized that agriculture depends on innovations and business mindset which can only be realized through business incubators to promote innovations for start-ups.
Out of about 300 applicants, 37 were selected based on merit and potential of their innovative ideas in agriculture and other related fields. These participants come from Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Odisha among others representing different sectors including food technology, value addition in fruits & vegetables; machinery’s drones precision farming.
Jacob John gave an elaborate description of how the selection process was done as well as what the program is all about during his presidential address, while Sureshkumar PK offered felicitations to them. The month-long training would cover key elements of agripreneurship such as product development, operational, marketing and legal aspects, financial and human resource management, crafting of business ideas .
The KAU-RAFTAAR programme has trained 208 start-ups and has disbursed Rs10.97 crore worth of pre-seed/seed funds over the years to these entrepreneurs engaged in various agricultural ventures. Among other things Prof KP Sudheer who is also the Principal Investigator for KAU-RAFTAAR Agri-Business Incubator noted that cumulatively 200 entrepreneurship development trainings have been conducted reaching out to more than five thousand potential farmers cum entrepreneurs.
Closing remarks were given by Abhishek S., Business Manager of RAFTAAR-Agri Business Incubator at KAU who thanked everyone thus marking another milestone towards fostering innovation and sustainability in the agricultural sector and underlining the importance of nurturing the next generation of agripreneurs.
