60 Startups To Participate In Agriculture Conclave At SOA In Bhubaneswar

Bhubaneswar: Around 60 start-ups, working on new technologies aimed at enabling farmers to adopt climate-resilient practices and other modern methods of agriculture, will participate in a two-day conclave at the Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan (SOA) Deemed to be University in Bhubaneswar on Saturday.

The conclave, titled ‘Ideation to Commercialisation—Opportunities for Start-ups’, is organised by Livelihood Alternatives, a social enterprise, in association with Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA)-iSEED Foundation, PACE Foundation and SOA.

Speaking on the conclave at a press meet on Friday, Sambit Tripathy, Chairman-cum-Managing Director, Livelihood Alternatives said it aims at creating an enabling framework where ideas, technological know-how and methods emanating from the social start-up eco-system could be leveraged for a market fit product.

It would expose farmers, artisans and rural households to the world of new ideas, technology and innovations. The conclave will have two parallel tracks – one where the start-ups will be presenting ideas and technology to the target audience and the other will provide them the space to exhibit their products.

The conclave will help the start-ups with market-connect while farmers will get an opportunity to enhance their income by adopting new technology and business models, said Tripathy.

The start-ups have been drawn from different social incubators including Odisha. The prominent participating incubators are I-hub Gujarat, IRMA-SEED Foundation, KIIT-TBI, Social Alpha and Institute of Life Sciences. Around 300 farmers from 65 blocks of Odisha are expected to participate in the conclave, he informed.

A Hackathon event is also scheduled to be held as part of the event where start-ups will compete with each other for creating sustainable models in the domains of agriculture, dairy and allied industries and agro forestry.

Prof Priyabrata Patnaik, Additional Dean (Research) of SOA and Dr Rakesh Arrawatia, Chair, iSEED, were present at the news conference.60