Startup Street: A Sandbox For Startups To Get Ready For The Agritech Boom

This week on Startup Street, one of India’s largest startup incubators explains how it’s helping agritech startups with its expansive reach and gamut of tie-ups. Messaging platform WhatsApp has a $250,000 gift for Indian startups. And billionaire Jack Ma’s flagship online finance firm has investments on its mind. Here’s what went on:

Indigram Labs Has A Lot To Offer Agritech Startups

It has been a bumper year for agritech startups. Funding has jumped three-fold over the previous year. New startups are sprouting up looking to solve legacy problems by improving crop output, increasing farm incomes, cutting down the middleman and enhancing efficiency in the farm-to-fork chain.

Amid this, three-year-old Indigram Labs is preparing agritech startups for the oncoming boom by giving them mentors, funds, resources, testing facilities and access to markets through its expansive rural reach.

“Indigram Labs is working incessantly to orient itself in a direction where its startups come up with modern solutions to old agricultural problems,” Chief Executive Officer Dr Manisha Acharya told BloombergQuint. “We have incubated over 35 startups so far and trained more than 4,000 youths in collaboration with the Indian Society of Agribusiness Professionals.”

The incubator has a network of 5 lakh farmers and promotes 250 farmer producer organisations across 18 states. That gives them a wide-enough reach to let startups test and tinker with their products in a controlled environment.

The potential has earned them some high profile backers and tie-ups. India’s Department of Science is the main supporting organisation for Indigram. Startups incubated at Indigram are funded under the government’s NIDHI seed funding programme, while slightly mature ones dip into the NIDHI Acceleration fund.

Indigram incubates startups for three years. They don’t provide traditional classroom sessions for graduates. Instead, they rely on in-house experts to assist them in problem-solving.

Besides, incubatees get access to cloud software and online tools from Jeff Bezos’ Amazon Web Services. They receive research and development support from the Indian Agricultural Research Institute in New Delhi, while Omnivore Partners assist with early funding. TERRA, an international accelerator by Rabobank and Rocketspace Inc., assists incubatees with financial analysis, intellectual property rights and soft-landing support.

Startups are selected based on the potential of their idea, the team and the scalability of their model. The incubator also considers the market demand of the products and on rare occasions whether they are having a social impact or not.

Some of its graduates include New Leaf Dynamics, Intello Labs, TechnifyBiz, Farms2fork and Agsmartic.

Recently, Indigram also launched a “smart village” program for the upliftment of the rural economy. The Adhunik Gram initiative is to improve e-literacy skills, access to e-health and other basic services and promote solutions for environmental concerns and agricultural waste, among others.

That gives further impetus to startups in the food, renewable energy and healthcare sectors that Indigram is already incubating. It has selected 14 startups to do on-ground pilot testing of their products. The top three startups will get cash prizes and a chance to win seed funding up to Rs 25 lakh.

By 2020, Indigram plans to set up a new $30 million fund for follow-up investments to each of its startups. It aims to incubate 100 quality startups in the next five years in agriculture, food processing, rural healthcare and renewable energy.

“We wish to create an entrepreneurial ecosystem especially in our target areas, where business can be made easier for budding startups,” Acharya said.

WhatsApp Is Giving Away $250,000 For Free

WhatsApp is set to offer $250,000 worth of Facebook advertisement credits to Indian startups to increase its market for advertising in India.

In a statement on Monday, the company said it will provide $500 each (around Rs 35,000) in ad credits to 500 startups. These startups will be approved by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade,

Interested startups can apply through Startup India’s website. The selection will be done on a first-come-first-serve basis. The first 500 selected entries will receive $500 ad credits for free.

The announcement comes after the Startup India-WhatsApp Grand Challenge under which the messaging platform had awarded a grant worth $50,000 (about Rs 35 lakh) each to five entrepreneurs who have developed India-specific solutions with socio-economic impact.

The move will also help Indian startups reach out to their customers. “India is at an inflection point and as the second-largest community of startups in the world, our focus has always been to support the ecosystem and promote innovative solutions to today’s challenges,” Deepak Bagla, chief executive officer and managing director at Invest India, was quoted as saying in the media statement.

Five million businesses around the world, of which a million are in India, are actively using the WhatsApp Business app to connect with their customers., the statement said.

Jack Ma Is Planning A $1-Billion Startup Fund

Billionnaire Jack Ma’s Ant Financial is planning to raise $1 billion for a fund that will invest in startups in Southeast Asia to India, Bloomberg reported.

The fintech firm is looking to fund more startups that focus on payments and online finance. Earlier in the week, Ant Financial Vice President Ji Gang confirmed at a Beijing conference that the firm was looking to raise a fund, but didn’t specify the amount or targets.

As economic growth in China slows and competition from Tencent Holdings Ltd. increases, the country’s largest finance operator—it runs Alipay—is looking to expand outside borders. The strategy complements that of affiliate Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., which has long relied on a successful payments network to encourage shoppers to buy online and order food.

In India, Ant Financial has already made significant investments in Paytm and Zomato.