AGRI UDAAN is a Food and Agribusiness Accelerator organized by a-IDEA, the Technology Business Incubator of ICAR-NAARM, with support from the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) and the Government of India. The program is dedicated to propelling scale-up stage Food and Agribusiness start-ups through rigorous mentoring, extensive industry networking, and opportunities to pitch before investors. AGRI UDAAN offers a unique platform for innovators, entrepreneurs, and start-ups in the Food and Agribusiness sectors to showcase their products and services, receiving valuable inputs from mentors, incubators, R&D institutions, agribusiness industries, investors, and other stakeholders in the start-up ecosystem.
Agri Udaan is a four to six months’ programme launched to receive the applications from startups that are trying to scale up. These startups usually are 2-3 years old, with a proven record of strong multidisciplinary team, having a working prototype and a reasonable traction in the market. Once the applications are received, they are evaluated on both technical and business parameters and a cohort of 8-10 innovative startups are shortlisted. The shortlisted cohort undergoes 3 days’ capacity building workshop at a-IDEA, NAARM followed by rigorous three months mentoring and networking activities with 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 1-2 demo days/ investor meets, wherein startups get a chance to pitch before a group of investors ranging from Venture Capitalists (VC), Angels, High Net worth Individuals (HNI), seed investors and corporates. One of the key outcomes of the accelerator is to make the cohort Agri-startups market-ready and investment-ready. Few of the startups also attract seed investments from a-IDEA through undergoing a separate selection process. This programme is aimed at scaling up innovative startups with a working prototype and initial market traction. This is done through education, mentorship, and financing. It also targets those innovative food and agri-business startups which have a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and that was validated and require fast-paced, intense mentorship, capital, and connections to investors and business partners for scaling up an early-stage startup ready for market. It brings on-board a range of diverse partners to create an inclusive and collaborative ecosystem focusing on catalysing scale-up stage food and agribusiness startups through rigorous mentoring, industry networking and investor pitching. It is also a unique platform for scale-up stage innovators, entrepreneurs and startups in food and agribusiness sectors to showcase their products/services and to receive valuable inputs from mentors, incubators, R&D institutions, agribusiness industry and investors. Basically, it is a program for agri startups to enter accelerators for fixed period of 2 months as a part of a cohort. The cohort is shortlisted by evaluation panel comprising of industry veterans, business experts, R&D scientists. It was estimated globally there were 10000+ incubators that exist and the majority of them focus on providing early-stage support to the startups through incubation programs. Keeping these things in view, a-IDEA started its operations in 2015 and launched the Agri Udaan 1.0, The first Food & Agribusiness Accelerator to support Agritech startups that are facing challenges to scale up.
