It is imperative to democratize technology and create jobs in rural India through development of Agri start up ecosystem
Dr Ashok Dalwai, CEO, NRAA, Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, Govt of India said that while India has made good progress in ease of doing business, more efforts are still required to make agriculture competitive.
Addressing the inaugural session of the third edition of FICCI Summit and Awards for Agri Start-ups, Dr Dalwai said that agricultural start-ups should become the pivot of agricultural transformation. He also mentioned that it is imperative to democratize technology and create jobs in rural India through development of Agri start up ecosystem. “We need to create a single platform of agricultural institutions and compile their technology to make it available to the Agri start-ups. There are numerous incubation centres in the country that run entrepreneurship development programmes. This needs to be made available through a single window system,” he said. Also, all government departments and stakeholders need to come together and set up a one -stop- solution for data collection, he added.
Speaking on the importance of the sector, Dr Dalwai said, “Agriculture should not be seen as just a food producing sector but as a major contributor to building the nation’s economy. While every nation will compete to becoming a global hub for certain commodities, India need to reorient and redesign agriculture to generate more productive employment and gain rightful position in global market.” He also highlighted the importance of collaborative partnership between Start-ups, FPOs and MSMEs to drive holistic growth in the sector.
Further, Dr Dalwai said that it is important to promote capacity building and enhance skills. “Secondary agriculture should be brought forward as a main activity for agricultural start-ups to explore” he added.
Neelkamal Darbari, MD, SFAC, Govt of India, mentioned that wider use and dissemination of customised technologies across the agriculture value chain from pre-harvest to post harvest is the need of the hour.
TR Kesavan, Chairman, FICCI National Agriculture Committee & Group President, TAFE Ltd said, “While the agri start-ups bring in brilliant ideas and get into a mode of action on the ground, one of the areas that they get stuck in is ‘how to expand?’ and we need to address this issue”.
