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Deepender Deswal
The Agri Business Incubation Centre (ABIC) at Chaudhary Charan Singh Haryana Agriculture University (HAU) with the support of the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) has provided single window access for all agricultural business activities to entrepreneurs and progressive farmers.
The corporate office of the centre has been set up on the HAU campus with financial assistance of Rs 11.74 crore from NABARD. The centre started functioning this week and two private firms offering expert advice to farmers in soil management and fertility have also collaborated with it. The ABIC is a platform to provide infrastructure and technical assistance in commercialisation and assist startup companies in establishing businesses through consultancy and training.
The focus areas for the startups, entrepreneurs and innovators are mushroom and bio-pesticide production, production and protection of crops, development of new varieties, organic farming, farm management, floriculture, apiculture, artificial intelligence in agriculture, processing and value addition, agriculture waste management, quality assistance, certification and branding, nursery raising, tissue culture, biogas or bio-fertiliser production and marketing.
Vice-Chancellor KP Singh says that marketing has emerged as the key tool for farming. “Farmers must learn the ropes of marketing to get the maximum benefit of their hard work. Be it the production of fruits, vegetables and even traditional crops, farmers must learn how to sell their products in the market. This is what we are trying to teach them at the ABIC on the campus. The centre is a single window solution to all problems of farmers (small, medium or big). Even for new generation entrepreneurs, who don’t own land but are keen to dabble into agriculture production and marketing, this field provides a good opportunity for not only earning a living but also contributing to the social and economic development of the state,” he says.
The HAU has decided to rope in a team of business experts, including business managers, and assistant business managers, to reach out to young entrepreneurs and farmers to promote new practices in agriculture and marketing. “The university has started the process to recruit the team which will play a pivotal role in the functioning of this centre,” says a spokesperson for the university.
NABARD Chairman Harsh Kumar Bhanwala, who was in the university last week to inaugurate the centre, had said that the ABIC offered infrastructure, counselling, technical mentoring and consultancy, services in capacity building, incubation and pilot-scale production, technology transfer, business plan preparation, networking, business mentoring, regulatory and advisory services, besides handholding and funding to startups. The university has fixed registration charges between Rs 2,000 and Rs one lakh.
It has fixed a fee of Rs 2,000 for an individual farmer, entrepreneur and students, and Rs 10,000 for NGOs and farmer groups. Public or private limited companies are required to pay Rs 25,000 while a fee of Rs 50,000 has been fixed for multi-national companies. The institutional membership fee is Rs 1 lakh.
Farmers need to learn marketing
"Farmers must learn the ropes of marketing to get the maximum benefit of their hard work. Be it the production of fruits, vegetables and even traditional crops, farmers must learn how to sell their products in the market. This is what we are trying to teach them at the ABIC on the campus." KP Singh, Vice-Chancellor, HAU
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