AGRI-STARTUPS IN NATIONAL CAPITAL REGION OF DELHI: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY
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Date
2022
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ICAR-SRS-NDRI, KARNAL
Abstract
Agri Start-ups have the potential to play a key role in stimulating the expansion of the agriculture sector and in turn, augment farmers income by transforming “subsistence farming into commercial farming” or ‘Agri-business’. The Agri start-ups are expanding at a rate of 25.00 percent year on year, at present about 450, among the total 4300 start-ups in the country. Delhi-NCR is one of the emerging start-up ecosystems in our country and according to the report of World bank (2020), it has also improved its ranking from its place of 142nd to 63rd in “ease of doing businesses”. In this context, the present study entitled “Agri-Startups in National Capital Region of Delhi: An Exploratory Study” was designed with the specific objectives of (1) To document the profile of Agri Start-ups, (2) To analyse the factors influencing the performance of the Agri Start-ups and (3) To identify the constraints faced by Agri-Start-ups. The research study was conducted in the National Capital Region of Delhi in the districts of Delhi, Gurugram, Noida, Ghaziabad and Faridabad with fifty Agri Start-ups selected from a total of 133 Agri Start-ups, using purposive sampling method. The significant findings of the study revealed that, 38.00 per cent of the Agri Start-ups were present in the ‘early-traction’ stage, followed by, ‘validation stage’ (30.00%), ‘scaling stage’ (24.00%) and ‘ideation stage’ (8.00%). Majority (74.00%) of the Agri- Start-ups were established during the period 2017 to 2020. Only 28.00 per cent of the Agri Start-ups were acquainted with incubator programme and 40.00 per cent of the entrepreneurs of the start-ups under study had received training related to their Start-ups. The majority of start-up entrepreneurs (70.00%) belonged to the middle age group and were postgraduates. The major sources of funding for the Agri Start-up entrepreneurs from the ‘Institutional sources’ were commercial banks (44.26%) and venture capitalists (20.15%); and from ‘non-institutional sources’ were family & friends (54.52%) and bootstrapping/own savings (49.51%). With regard to the performance of Agri start-ups as perceived by the entrepreneurs, the overall distribution of entrepreneurs the identified factors of the influence revealed that most of the respondents belonged to category of medium level of influence, in case of entrepreneurial behaviour factors (70.00%), economic factors (56.00%), demographics factors (56.00%) and environmental factors (60.00%), and business factors (62.00%). With regard to internal factors (66.00%) and socio-cultural factors (68.18%) the levels of influence were low and medium respectively. The major constraints faced by Agri Start-up entrepreneurs were, low price for the products (49.44), high cost of technologies (47.44), lack of government support (48.14), non-cooperation of family members (54.56) and limited market access during covid-19 pandemic (59.48). Therefore, policymakers and other key stakeholders could also pay special attention for building a conducive and sustainable "Agri start-up ecosystem" by creating a strong functional network among different stakeholders such as start-ups, academia, research, industry, and financial institutions for the promotion of Agri start-ups.