Assam Agribusiness Growth Lab (AAGL) organized a Demo Day for its Cohort 2 startups on April 28, 2023, at NEDFi House, Guwahati. The startups from its 1st Cohort also joined the event for networking and to showcase their value-added products and services. Shri Akash Deep, IAS, State Project Director of ARIAS Society, exchanged views with the enterprises and offered his best wishes for the program. Other industry representatives and incubators such as NEDFi, NABARD, Neate Hub, FINER, Assam Startup Nest, Guwahati Biotech Park, ALPCO, SELCO Foundation, NRL, USTM, IITG, along with international organizations like IRRI, ILRI,World Fish Centre, World Vegetable Centre etc. also attended the Demo Day, which is meant for showcasing the variety of value-added products to potential buyers and funding agencies.
AAGL is an initiative of APART, ARIAS Society, Government of Assam. It has the unique distinction of being a highly novel Enterprise Incubation and Acceleration Project, that is focused on Agribusinesses of Assam cutting across sub-sectors and representative of the true resources and endeavors of the entrepreneurial pathfinders of the state. AAGL was created by CIIE.CO (an Incubator built at IIM Ahmedabad) under association with APART and co-implements the project with ICCSPL (Innovative Change Collaborative Services Pvt. Ltd.), a Project Consultancy firm based in Delhi with vast experience in the Northeast.
AAGL is an eight-month acceleration program that seeks out 25 agribusiness enterprises for the year and takes them through intensive Diagnostics, Solutioning, and other augmentation services, that bolster and thus refined business models and achieves outcomes such as addition/adoption of technology, create new products and services, increase in turnover, etc. The four-year support from APART is designed for AAGL to solve critical interventions in the entrepreneurship scene of Assam and is reviewed by World Bank as well, for results that are achieved by the initiative.
Launched on 30 June 2021, AAGL is now into its 2nd cohort and is midway through accelerating Assam’s agribusiness pioneers and pathfinders. For an overview, 88% of the cohort in year 1 achieved at least 3 of the outcomes that are foci of the AAGL program, with 20 new products, an increase in turnover across the cohort by at least 20%, 5.6 Crore INR mobilized in finance, etc. This Promethean effort of APART is being implemented by CIIE.CO and ICCSPL are fast turning the spotlight on AAGL as being a one-of-a-kind initiative that will steer the agribusiness ecosystem of Assam into a rich legacy of entrepreneurship and value creation. In its 2nd Cohort 29 more enterprises are nearing completion of the process and similar outcomes are in progress. These 54 enterprises are expected to set the ball rolling for high-growth entrepreneurship in due course.
