Rs 122 Crore Released To Over 1,700 Agri-Startups: Minister
RKVY aims to promote innovation and agri-entrepreneurship, by providing financial and technical support
Rs 122 Crore Released To Over 1,700 Agri-Startups: Minister
New Delhi: The government has released Rs122.50 crore to over 1,700 agri-startups in the last five years under the Innovation and AgriEntrepreneurship Development programme, Parliament was informed.
The programme, implemented in 2018-19 under the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (RKVY), aims to promote innovation and agri-entrepreneurship, by providing financial and technical support for nurturing startups.
A financial assistance of Rs122.50 crore has been released to 1,708 agri startups from 2019-20 to 2023-24. The funds were released through five Knowledge Partners (KPs) and 24 RKVY Agri-business Incubators (R-ABIs) that provide training and incubate startups for implementation of this programme, Minister of State for Agriculture Bhagirath Choudhary said in his written reply to the Lok Sabha on Tuesday.
During 2023-24, about Rs147.25 crore was released to 532 startups.
The minister said that under the programme, financial support of up to Rs5 lakh is provided at the idea stage and up to Rs25 lakh at the seed stage to startups in agriculture and allied sectors to launch their products, services, business platforms, etc and to facilitate in scaling up.
In July this year, the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare in collaboration with the Na-tional Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) also launched a Rs750 crore ‘Agri Sure’ fund for startups to promote investment in innovative, technology-driven and high-impact activities in agriculture and rural enterprises.
The fund announced by NABVentures, a subsidiary of NABARD has an initial corpus of Rs750 crore with 250 crore each from NABARD and the Ministry of Agriculture, and 250 crore from other institutions.