Aug052017
Posted by:The Caspian Blog Team
Agri Udaan Food & Agri Accelerator 2.0
Building a stronger Food & Agribusiness Ecosystem in India is a strategic priority for Caspian. We are supporting a-IDEA Technology Business Incubator of NAARM on the accelerator initiative to directly contribute towards a stronger Food & Ag Ecosystem in India.
Agri Udaan Food and Agribusiness Accelerator is a focused program targeted towards startups that are trying to scale up their innovative startups.
Globally, out of ~ 7, 500+ incubators that exist, majority of them focus on early stage support to the startups through incubation programs. There are very few accelerators, especially when it comes to Accelerators in India focused in Food and Agri-Business, they are almost none. With this background, a-IDEA, NAARM-TBI, when it started its operations in 2015, realized the importance of such programs to support agritech startups that are facing challenges in scaling up. In this endeavour, a-IDEA, NAARM partnered with CIIE, IIM-A in 2015 to launch India’s first food and agri-business accelerator program. This is the second edition of the Accelerator.
Agri Udaan is a 4 to 6-month program that is launched in order to receive the applications from startups that are trying to scale up (Such startups may be usually 2-3 years old, with a proven team, a working prototype and a reasonable traction in the market as few of the eligibility criteria for the startups to apply). Once the applications are received, they would be evaluated on both technical and business parameters and a cohort of 8-10 innovative startups will be shortlisted. The shortlisted cohort undergoes 3 days capacity building workshop at a-IDEA, NAARM followed by rigorous three month mentoring and networking activities supported by mentors helping them on different areas of scaling up including marketing, sales, R&D, Legal, Finance, IP, Technology, Investment etc. (based on the milestones set by the startups to scale up during the capacity building workshop), the end of this accelerator is earmarked by 2 demo days/ investor meets, wherein startups get a chance to pitch before a group of investors ranging from VC, Angels, HNI’s, seed investors and corporates. One of the key outcomes of the accelerator is to make the cohort Agri-startups investment ready and market ready. Few of the startups may also attract assured seed investments from a-IDEA.
Focus areas include: Sustainable Inputs, Precision Agriculture, Food Tech Innovations, Supply Chain Technology, Fisheries, Soil, Water & Weather Technology, Agri Fintech, Animal Husbandry, Urban/Vertical Farming, Agri Biotech, Post-Harvest Technology, Farm Fresh Retail, Farm Mechanisation.
Starts with Roadshows in August, Shortlisting is to be done by the end of September. Mentoring process begins in October and demo day in Mumbai in January.
All promising startups in the Food & Agribusiness space should apply at the Agri Udaan Website.
