AAGL conducts boot camp for agribusinesses in Guwahati

GUWAHATI: A total of 29 agribusiness enterprises went through an intensive three-day boot camp as the second cohort of enterprises under the Assam Agribusiness and Rural Transformation Project (APART) funded by World Bank and conceived and supported by accelerator the Assam Agribusiness Growth Lab (AAGL).

This programme is being co-implemented with ICCSPL (Innovative Change Collaborative Services Pvt Ltd.), a project management consulting organization, stated a press release.

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 four years in the agri and allied sectors. The current cohort would accelerate 45% women-led businesses. The second AAGL Cohort launch was announced in the month of June, 2022 with a call for applications garnered through physical road shows 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 programme 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, CIIE.CO, NIFTEM, YFactor Marketing Pvt Ltd, Indian Institute of Packaging, and Global Network India.

Roshni Aparanji Korati, State Project Director of ARIAS Society, spoke enlightening and encouraging words to these driven entrepreneurs that motivated them to share their appreciation of the efforts of the government in their journey of scaling heights. Korati wished the programme all success and highlighted the role of start-ups 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 Start-ups in India', that aims to support incubators in Assam and the North-East region with best practices on supporting start-ups, 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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