Patancheru, India
December 17, 2008
The Agri-Business Incubator at the
International Crops Research
Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ABI-ICRISAT) won the
prestigious AABI (Asian Association of Business Incubation)
Award for the year 2008. The award was presented by Mr Saffar
Annuar, President of AABI at the 13th General Assembly held in
Seoul, Korea, recently.
The Asian Association of Business Incubation promotes business
incubation activities by facilitating information exchanges
among incubators, incubator clients and related organizations in
Asia Pacific. It is composed of organizations operating
incubation programs in the Asia-Pacific region. There are more
than 1,000 incubators in this region.
According to Dr William Dar, Director General of ICRISAT, this
is a significant achievement for the second time for
ABI-ICRISAT. ABI had received the national award for Best
Business Incubator for 2005 from the Government of India in May
2006.
“This is a recognition of our initiatives in public-private
partnership and highlight ICRISAT’s unique model of incubation
in agri-business. ABI-ICRISAT is an innovative institutional
mechanism to facilitate technology commercialization and reach
out to farmers through agri-business ventures,” Dr Dar said.
“Through ABI-ICRISAT, we could make a difference to the
livelihood of nearly 30,000 farmers through various products and
services to over 60 incubated ventures. Currently, we are
replicating similar agri-business incubator initiatives in
partnership with domestic and international agricultural
research institutes,” Dr Dar added.
ABI-ICRISAT was established with support from the National
Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board
(NSTEDB), Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government
of India, in the year 2003.
ABI-ICRISAT promotes technology commercialization through
public-private partnership under the Agri-Science Park at
ICRISAT. It provides opportunity for entrepreneurs to incubate
agricultural technologies so that they become effective
agri-business ventures. ABI-ICRISAT also provides a range of
services that include agricultural technologies, business
consultancy, facilitation of funding, and provision of
infrastructure and facilities at ICRISAT, Patancheru.
Entrepreneurs also get the opportunity to tap the expertise of
ICRISAT's scientists.
ABI-ICRISAT has pioneered the commercialization of the sweet
sorghum-based ethanol venture. It has also successfully
commercialized ICRISAT’s groundnut ICGV 91114 and chickpea
variety JG 11 in Andhra Pradesh, India, together with Aakruthi
Agricultural Associates of India. It has also incubated 35
ventures and generated direct employment for over 550 and
mobilized US$8 million for the companies that it has incubated.
ABI-ICRISAT has also facilitated the Indian Council of
Agricultural Research (ICAR) to establish five Business
Processing and Development (BPD) Units across India.
More recently, ABI-ICRISAT has been accredited as an outreach
Center for Technopreneur Promotion Program (TePP) by the
Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India. TePP is
jointly operated by the Department of Scientific and Industrial
Research (DSIR) and the Technology Information, Forecasting and
Assessment Council (TIFAC) of DST to tap the vast innovative
potential of the citizens of India. TePP is a mechanism to
promote individual innovators to become technology-based
entrepreneurs (Technopreneurs).
Similar initiatives have resulted in developing and operating
business incubators in collaboration with national agricultural
research systems – the Investigação Agrária de Moçambique (IIAM)
of Mozambique and the Agricultural Research and Extension Unit
(AREU) of Mauritius. In India, ABI-ICRISAT has helped initiate
an agri-business incubator for the Tamil Nadu Agricultural
University at Coimbatore, and partnered with the Science &
Technology Entrepreneurs Park (STEP), Thapar University,
Patiala, Punjab, on co-business incubation. |
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