The Agri event featured a panel discussion and the launch of a series of entrepreneurship case studies navigating through the Agri-Tech space in India
21 July, 2022, Bengaluru: IIM Bangalore’s innovation and entrepreneurship hub NSRCEL, in partnership with AgHub of the Professor Jayashankar Telangana State Agricultural University (PJTSAU), conducted ‘Go Agri’ – a panel discussion and the launch of a series of entrepreneurship case studies navigating through the Agri-Tech space in India, on July 20 (Wednesday), 2022.
The panel discussion, moderated by Vijay Nadiminti, CEO, AgHub, saw the participation of Dr. Kalpana Shastry Regulagedda, Managing Director, AgHub; Kanishka Chatterjee, Social Innovation, The/Nudge Prize; Satya Sagar, Senior Analyst, Omnivore, and Atthri Anand, Co-founder & CEO, Deep Flow Technologies. The event included an address by Dr. V. Praveen Rao, Vice Chancellor, PJTSAU. Shaji Krishnan, Deputy Managing Director, National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), delivered the keynote address on ‘Digitizing Agri-Value Chain’.
The event witnessed the launch of three case studies on Blockchain and Traceability solutions in collaboration with Venture - TraceX Technologies, SaaS platform for Data & B2B Services in collaboration with Venture Satyukt & Soil Technology, Farm Data, and related Cloud Services in collaboration with Venture Krishitantra. This is a first-of-its-kind collaboration through an incubator in the country. The case studies will help generate valuable insights on finding out ways to help early-stage companies transform into scalable and successful businesses.
“We are proud to collaborate with AgHub to launch these unique and much-needed case studies by an incubator in India. The country has recently bolstered its position as a global start-up hub, and it has become critical to provide the right support that helps early-stage entrepreneurs build scalable and successful ventures. The case studies will offer insights that will help and guide the ventures on their purpose-driven missions,” said Anand Sri Ganesh, COO, NSRCEL.
With a focus on rural entrepreneurship and agriculture, NSRCEL looks towards a continued collaboration with the AgHub team, he added. “Innovation catering to the rural economy needs to be built upon to foster economic recovery and bridge the urban-rural divide. This means, looking beyond the lens of creating local livelihoods, by catalyzing a rural entrepreneurial ecosystem that enables disruptive innovations which create access to education, increased farm incomes, and affordable healthcare”.
The case studies focus on the journey of the start-ups from an ideation stage to becoming successful businesses, with mentorship and support from the incubator. Founded by Srivatsa, TraceX Technologies was supported on interventions by the AgHub team with blockchain as its theme. The start-up was guided by the academic expertise of Prof. Gopal Naik, IIMB faculty from the Economics & Social Sciences area, who has published many papers on this technology. Similarly, founded by Tomar, Satyukt is an easy-to-use SaaS platform that can be accessed through API and mobile apps. The Agri-Tech company provides B2B data and services and was guided by the academic expertise of Prof. R. Srinivasan, Chairperson of the two-year fulltime MBA: Post Graduate Programme in Management (PGP) and PGP in Business Analytics (faculty in the Strategy area). Krishitantra, founded by Sandeep Kondaji, focuses on soil technology, farm data acquisition, and related cloud services and was guided by the experience and knowledge of Prof. Rahul Dé, Dean, Programmes and faculty in the Information Systems area.
Prof. Gopal Naik, who also holds the Jal Jeevan Mission Chair in Utility Development & Water Economics at IIMB, released the case study on ‘Block Chain and Traceability’, while Prof. Rahul Dé released the case study on ‘Soil Technology, Farm Data Acquisition & Related Cloud Services’. Prof. R Srinivasan released the case study on ‘Saas Platform for Data & B2B Services’.
The launch of these case studies is the result of NSRCEL’s strategic partnership with AgHub, PJTSAU for the Agri and allied start-ups at NSRCEL through mentorship and subject matter expertise of agronomists.
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