Guwahati: Twenty-nine agribusiness enterprises went through an intensive 3-day boot camp as the 2nd cohort of enterprises, under the Assam Agribusiness and Rural Transformation Project (APART) funded by World Bank; conceived and supported accelerator, the Assam Agribusiness Growth Lab (AAGL) led by CIIE.CO, IIM Ahmedabad’s startup accelerator. This program is co-implemented with ICCSPL (Innovative Change Collaborative Services Pvt. Ltd.), a Project Management Consulting Organization.
This cross-functional team has entrepreneurship, finance, and incubation experts, supported by an industry network under a strategic process created by CIIE.CO.
The AAGL initiative was officially launched on June 30, 2021, and successfully accelerated and graduated its first Cohort of 25 enterprises. The AAGL programme aims to support 100 enterprises in 4 years in the Agri and allied sectors. The current cohort would accelerate 45% of women-led businesses. The 2nd AAGL Cohort launch was announced in June 2022 with a call for applications garnered through physical roadshows and social media outreach campaigns, in coordination with APART district coordinators and District Industries and Commerce Centres. After the multi-stage evaluation process—scrutiny, pitching session, enterprise mapping, and due diligence process; 29 founders are now part of the 8-month program after scrutinizing hundreds of applications
The acceleration process started with a boot camp organized at Guwahati. The three-day physical event saw sessions with valuable business and technology insights by industry and academic practitioners from IIMA, and CIIE.CO, NIFTEM, YFactor Marketing Pvt Ltd., Indian Institute of Packaging, and Global Network India.
Roshni Aparanji Korati, IAS, State Project Director of ARIAS Society, spoke motivated the entrepreneurs to share their appreciation of the efforts of the government in their journey of scaling heights. Korati wished the program all success and highlighted the role of startups in growing private expenditure in the state of Assam to contribute to economic development.
Korati also launched a playbook authored at CIIE.CO – ‘Incubators for the Next Generation of Startups in India’ that aims to support incubators in Assam and the North-East regions with best practices on supporting startups, raising funds, hiring and other challenges. The boot camp was attended by NIFTEM (Sonepat), SELCO Foundation, USTM, Guwahati Biotech Park, and STPI (Guwahati).
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