Assam Agribusiness Growth Lab, an APART led acceleration program in partnership with CIIE.CO, IIM Ahmedabad’s incubator, completing its inaugural cohort, successfully staged “Pitching & Demo Day” on 10th June 2022. The Demo Day was a coming together of stakeholders, government agencies, financial bodies, investors, buyers with the AAGL entrepreneurs in focus. Dr. Ashish Bhutani, IAS, State Project Director of APART was at the event as the Chief Guest. The rest of the industry stalwarts present were from DIC, NEDFi, NRL, NABARD, HDFC bank, North East Small Finance Bank, CII, FINER, SELCO Foundation, Department of Fisheries, Department of Agriculture, ARIAS Society, World Veg, World Fish, IRRI etc. CIIE.CO in partnership with ICCSPL is co-implementing this acceleration programme in Assam that was officially launched on 30th June 2021.
Dr. Bhutani categorically remarked that Govt of Assam is committed to promote an enabling agriculture enterprise ecosystem in the state. Towards this, APART has initiated the Assam Agribusiness Growth Lab program to foster and accelerate the growth of the Agro-processing sector.
Assam Agribusiness Growth Lab (AAGL) organized the Demo Day primarily to interpret its flagship journey of 1 year of the Cohort acceleration process. The Demo Day saw 10 enterprises pitching their businesses before a group of reputed investors representing agencies as diverse as Menterra, Caspian, NEDFi, NRL, HDFC Bank, AGVB etc. showing potential for immense investment opportunities in the Agri and allied sector in Assam.
The event kick-started with round-table discussions among diverse ecosystem players and engaged the entrepreneurs with different stakeholders towards access to finance & markets.
Mr. Chintan Bakshi, partner CIIE.CO and CEO Startupoasis stated that the AAGL is a path-breaking program not only for Assam but it is also a potential trend-setter for supporting Agri-based businesses and MSMEs across India.
Another event highlight was launch of Freshdo App, an AAGL incubatee, which is an online essentials delivery platform for farm fresh vegetables, fruits and meat. Mr. Arijit Sarmah, AAGL Team Leader and Senior Manager, Regional Incubation, CIIE.CO demonstrated on the Call for Application URL hyperlinked to the AAGL website (https://aagl.ciie.co/) for its upcoming cohort and urged every eligible Agri-entrepreneur of Assam to apply to the program.
