Program Overview

India’s rural agricultural landscape is home to legacy Agri institutions, a large civil society and a farm-supportive government. Moreover, the historical policy push to adopt scientific and technological innovations from the world is now being complimented by a new generation of Agri innovators and entrepreneurs who are building indigenous innovations suited for Indian farms. However, despite these trends and chronology, millions of small farmers living on more than 125 million small and marginal land holdings in India, continue to face extreme financial, technological and climate-induced challenges.

The India Agritech Incubation Network (IAIN) is a collaborative effort between the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Social Alpha. It aims to establish a conducive ecosystem for innovators and entrepreneurs in agriculture. The network has fostered cooperation among private and public sector stakeholders, created specialised technical infrastructure, provided market access, influenced public policy and facilitated market access for early-stage innovative solutions. The diversity of innovations spans pre-cultivation technologies for soil & crop health, inclusive farm equipment for drudgery-cost-risk reduction, post-harvest technologies for loss elimination, and allied sector innovations for building income resilience. IAIN was conceived and designed to bring science and technology innovations to small and marginal farmers and help improve their productivity, income and quality of life.

Focus Areas

Small Farm Mechanisation
  • Drudgery & Labour Equity: Labour intensive operations in cash crop farming such as sowing/planting, input application, inter-cultivation, and harvesting results in high dependence on manual labour and higher cultivation cost due to labour scarcity and limited operating time.
  • Innovative solutions that can improve the utilisation efficiency of agriculture inputs.
  • Unavailability: Lack of appropriately designed equipment that meet the needs of small and marginal farmers, especially women.
  • Affordability: High capital expenditure and operating costs due to fossil fuel dependency make small farm mechanisation economically unviable, thereby limiting its adoption by small and marginal farmers.
Soil Carbon Rejuvenation
  • Misselection and unbalanced application of chemical inputs has weakened the rhizosphere & soil biome diversity, thus leading to low symbiotic exchange of organic matter between soil and crops.
  • Over reliance on synthetic farm inputs has disrupted carbon cycles on farms creating suboptimal yields with high costs.
  • Intensive farming & climate change have degraded the soil carbon pool & soil structure, thus impacting biological & hydrological efficiency of the soil.
  • In the absence of alternative incentives systems that can cushion risks, farmers see no merit/need to participate in ‘Good for soil organic carbon’ practices.
  • There is a lack of reliable, easy and economically viable tools to calculate carbon fractions, thus limiting incentives for farmers for regenerative carbon practices.
Post Harvest Management
  • Limited price for lower grade produce (in perishables) impacts farm incomes. There is need of decentralised technologies to create market linked value-added products from low grade produce.
  • Loss of weight & quality of perishable commodities due to moisture loss, rotting and sprouting leads to lower price realisation.
Feed & Nutrition for Cattle
  • Seasonality and non-availability of green fodder, along with the overall decline in green fodder production increases fodder cost.
  • The lack of region-specific and breed-specific feed options for cattle is resulting in the widespread use of generalised feed formulations, leading to detrimental impacts on production yield and animal health.
  • Non availability of screening and diagnostic tools for identifying health and nutrition deficiencies leads to generic, misaligned and non-scientific supplement prescriptions.
  • Concentrate feed prices are increasing YoY due to raw material shortage and inflation. Access and affordability are limited to 30% farmers who are organised via cooperatives.
Forest Bioeconomy & Conservation
  • NTFP: Low productivity, disease & climate stress impacts NTFP yield resulting in low incomes and unsustainable practices.
  • NTFP: Due to lack of value preservation & value addition of NTFPs, PGs receive a mere 25% portion of the overall value while intermediaries claim an excessive 75% share.
  • Forest fires: Accumulation of dry biomass on forest floor increases the bio-fuel load which combined with heat stress triggers forest fires.

MEET THE COHORT

Program Offerings

Sandbox facility to test, validate and pilot innovations on the ground in the state of Uttar Pradesh and Odisha.
Access to Social Alpha’s seed investment and / or other funding opportunities; and facilitated access to a large investor and donor network.
Product development support via Social Alpha Labs including assistance with designing, rapid prototyping and design for manufacturing.
Dedicated Agri-business experts to assist with business planning, developing go-to-market strategy and overall business advisory.
Mentorship by a set of qualified global and local experts; and curated set of capacity building sessions.
Practical on-the-ground feedback from the farmer community, grassroots non-profits, agriculture experts and corporate and government bodies.
Access to shared office space and lab infrastructure at Social Alpha Labs

Program Impact (2019-2021)

30
Startups Onboarded
30
Pilots Across the State
70
Partners
30
Districts Impacted
75000
Households Covered
1.25 CR
Worth of Incubation Support
4.5 CR
Investment in Piloting
6.05 CR
Market Access
60CR
Finance Leveraged

Indian Agritech Incubation Network (IAIN) is a unique venture where there is a consortium of partners like Social Alpha, CInI, BMGF and IIT Kanpur coming together to address the issues of small and marginal farmers. The innovations & solutions that have been selected through the program are basically addressing very specific challenges in agriculture. The UP government is proactively working towards promoting these solutions through testing small beds, connecting with the farmer-producer organisations, improving the product to make it more acceptable to farmers. Subsequently as the product scales up its activities, there are different government schemes to incentivise the technologies and subsidise the machinery, etc. The technologies and solutions can be embedded in the system to make it more acceptable and affordable to the farmers. All these efforts combined will enable the farmers to address the challenges and empower them. And IAIN is a positive effort towards the creating that impact on small and marginal farmers.

DEVESH CHATURVEDI

Additional Chief Secretary, Department of Agriculture, Cooperation & Farmer’s Welfare, Uttar Pradesh

We were using the feed supplied by Shwetdhara but not satisfied with fat levels. Now there is sufficient protein, fat and maize in the feed & performance of feed is more than satisfactory.

Ashok Jaiswal

Madafarpur, Pratapgarh, UP

Strategic Partners

Outreach Partners