Youth from the Information Technology (IT) industry are being attracted towards agribusiness and sought information on organic farming, precision farming and IT applications in agriculture.
They were keen on venturing into agribusinesses and adopting scientific methods and practices to make agriculture sustainable on farms in their villages. Other areas of interest for all participants included – protected cultivation, farm planning and technical support from ICRISAT, millet-based food processing technologies, Internet of Things – IT and internet-based applications in agriculture like mobile apps for agriculture information, weather forecast, market information, online trading, etc.

These youngsters visited the AIP-ICRISAT stall at August Fest 2015, a mega startup event, held in Hyderabad, India. At the fest they signed up for the ‘Crawl’ – a visit to the ABI Program. Youngsters from the IT sector accounted for 75 percent of the 55 participants.

During their visit to ICRISAT, the participants were oriented on the business opportunities available in agriculture and were provided information on the start-ups they were interested in. The visiting group also interacted with three AIP clients who shared their experiences. A competition was also organized for best ideas. Five ideas were presented and two were declared winners.

The Crawl was held at ICRISAT on 30 August. As a follow-up, the ICRISAT-ABI program is in the process of engaging with four to five participants to incubate startups. Based on requests of the participants, two training programs, one on precision farming and the other on organic farming, are being planned.