Involving IT startups to revolutionize farming

Mr Jay Krishnan, CEO T-Hub and Dr Carberry, exchange signed MoU. Photo: S Punna, ICRISAT

Digital agriculture gets a boost with the launch of a strategic partnership between T-Hub, the startup incubator in Telangana State and ICRISAT. The areas that will be explored in the collaboration include:

1. The setting up of an incubation hub for agriculture.
2. Partnerships and synergies across the innovation spectrum.
3. Sponsoring agricultural related programs, events and workshops.
4. Ways in which ICRISAT can become a partner in T-Hub’s Accelerator program in the agriculture domain, which provides a very rigorous course with high-level mentorship to start-up entrepreneurs.

“Food and life sciences demands are of the highest need in the country. It’s also a time when science innovations in the area of big data and analytics are intersecting with each other to change the technology landscape. It is with this motive that we are keen to innovate and push the boundaries in the AgriTech space. The T-Hub and ICRISAT engagement model is a unique one, designed to challenge and bring change to the agriculture landscape in India,” says Jay Krishnan, Chief Executive Officer of T-Hub.

Under this partnership, an international Agricultural Innovation Program will be launched and the initiative will begin by sourcing AgriTech startups from Israel. Both, ICRISAT and T-Hub will provide mentoring, access to agriculture-centric research, business models and market access. To facilitate a lot of this, ICRISAT is setting up an innovations and creative space for entrepreneurs and other stakeholders. The plan is to create a dynamic Agricultural Innovation Platform in Hyderabad that will help to substantially improve the lives of farmers not just in India but around the world.

“We are very excited about this close partnership and the enormous potential it has. This is a unique collaboration that brings together ICRISAT’S expertise in agriculture across the value chain and T-Hub’s vibrant and extensive network of entrepreneurs that have varied skills and creative capabilities. We will span multiple programs covering agriculture as the core domain and technology innovation which will create impact on a large scale. We also plan to run multiple collaborations including theme based hackathons and acceleration programs,” says Dr. David Bergvinson, Director General of ICRISAT.

Indian farmers and agricultural value chain actors need access to comprehensive information: weather forecasts, ideal dates for planting and other farm operations, appropriate crop varieties, potential return on investment and more. But this information is often difficult to access, analyze, and communicate in a timely and accessible format to farmers. Digital entrepreneurs can play a crucial role in gathering, analyzing and disseminating that information to farmers in a more accessible medium. Timely access to this information could increase food production and help farmers overcome the challenges of extreme climate variability.

T-Hub is a unique public-private partnership between the government of Telangana, three of India’s premier academic institutes (International Institute of Information Technology – Hyderabad, Indian School of Business and National Academy of Legal Studies and Research) and key private sector leaders.

The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed on 31 May between the two organizations to foster a collaborative environment to help entrepreneurs at T-Hub leverage their skills to improve the lives of smallholder farmers in the drylands of South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.