Dr. Parveen Kumar, Dr. Anil Kumar
Unemployment is the biggest challenge today in the country having wider social and economic ramifications. Everybody today wants a job as per his qualification and skills which is not possible. The youths have already been looking towards the government for doing something to ease the doing of business. Considering this the Government of India has started many schemes to promote entrepreneurial skills among the youths and to kindle the spirit of adventure among the country’s youth. The Startup is also a scheme of this sort. The basic idea is to provide skill based training to them and to help them in setting up their own enterprise combined with a friendly tax regime. They can go ahead with their dream ventures taking advantage of the friendly ecosystem of easy registrations, liberal finance tax benefits and a simplified regulatory system. Youths setting up their own enterprises will not be job seekers but will be job providers. For this the government has relaxed many norms so that they can get hassle for loans from the financial institutions with moratorium in repayment and tax rebates in the initial years.
A Startup refers to an entrepreneurial venture which is typically a newly emerged, fast-growing business that aims to meet a marketplace needed by developing or offering an innovative product, process or service. A startup is usually a company such as a small business, a partnership or an organisation designed to rapidly develop scalable business model. By defination the Start up denotes an entity incorporated or regulated in India not prior to five years, having an annual turnover not exceeding Rs 25 crore in any preceding year and that works towards innovation, development or deployment or commercialisation of new products, processes or services driven by technology or intellectual property. A Startup ceases to exist the day it completes five years from the date of incorporation or registration.
Indian agriculture has been marred by subdivision and fragmentation of landholdings. This coupled with the uncertainty in monsoon are hitting the farm households badly. The effects have been particularly felt in regions where rural youth have few options outside of agriculture. Agriculture is still seen as a risky enterprise and that is the reason why most of the peoples are unwilling to invest in this sector. The uncertainty in agriculture together with the complexity in taking help from financial institutions to the farming community has made it difficult for the young aspiring youths to establish enterprises in the country.
Agricultural start up has been launched by the government which has tried to remove the existing constraints in existing system and made setting up of agricultural related ventures more enterprise friendly and youth stimulating. There are already numerous agriculture related startups that are working towards the upliftment of the agricultural sector and have formulated well innovative ideas to for serving Indian farming community. Rikin Gandhi of Digital Green, IFFCO Kissan Sanchar limited, Indian Tobacco Company’s (ITC) e-choupal, Tata Kissan Sansar (TKS) limited and many others are examples of the Startups that have made the most use of Information Communication technologies for the betterment of farmers. The Agri-hub is another entrepreneurial venture that provides information about different brands in high tech agriculture. It connects companies, distributors and retailers. This platform helps the farmers to track products and innovations. Similarly to exploit the potential of smart phones and their penetration in the rural areas, a new innovative startup called Agro Star has been started by young aspiring entrepreneurs. It is basically have easy access of the farming community to the farm equipments or other raw materials on their mobile phone. They have built a “direct to farmer” m-commerce platform through which farmers can procure agricultural related inputs needed for their farms by simply giving a missed call on their platform and eventually accessing their mobile app. Agro Star currently operates in the states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. Similarly Y Cook another agricultural related Startup, which sells organic, ready-to-cook processed foods, trains farmers to grow and handle post-harvest processing for a hybrid seed variety called Sugar 75, used to produce American sweet corn. The seeds have a shelf-life of up to 12 months without needing refrigeration or preservatives. The organisation is working with over 1,000 farmers from Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Telangana and other states.
Major features of Agricultural Startup:
Startups should offer something new by virtue of its services or products. The services of products should involve use of technology or intellectual property.
It should not be formed by splitting already running or existing business units. It should be new in entirety if it has to take advantage of the startup scheme.
A Startup shall be eligible for tax benefits only after it has obtained the certification validating the innovative nature of the business from the interministerial board setup for such purpose by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion. One is not liable to get the tax benefits unless there is some innovation in his product or process or services.
The validations will not absolve entities of liability in case of misrepresentation. In order to provide funding support to startups,
Government will set up a fund with an initial corpus of Rs 2,500 crore and a total corpus of Rs 10,000 crore over a period of four years (Rs 2,500 crore per year).
The diversity of business activity the agricultural Startups will undertake will boost economic growth and trigger creation of thousands of jobs. The action plan of the agricultural Startups has ended an era of doubt and fear for the young entrepreneurs. They need not sit on the fence any longer and they can take the risk which they wanted to. The young entrepreneurs can see a government eager to give them a helping hand. As Prime Minister Narendra Modi has rightly said that those wanting to launch their own Startups were nor driven by money motive but had a desire to bring about a change. It was this spirit of adventure that the society had to respond to. Ultimately the success of the agricultural Startup will be measured by their employment generation potential, their reach towards the farming community and the technology adoption by the farmers.
(The authors are from Advanced Center for Rainfed Agriculture (ACRA),
SKUAST-J)