Innovation hub is set for inauguration today
Professor Jayashankar Telangana State Agricultural University (PJTSAU) will join a few other agricultural universities in the country to have the distinction of housing agri incubators when its agri innovation hub, AgHub, is inaugurated on the campus here on Monday.
AgHub operates in a hub and spoke model, where the innovation hub headquartered on the PJTSAU campus supports agritech startups through ‘Innovation-Incubation-Acceleration’ of the startups across the country, whereas the rural innovation spokes in Jagtial, Warangal and Vikarabad would cater to the promotion of rural entrepreneurship.
The rural entrepreneurship for building agribusiness enterprises promoted by rural youth, women, farmers and farmer producer organisations (FPOs) would cater to the last mile delivery of innovations. They would also act as agritech innovation pilots, help capacity building of FPOs and building FPO-led enterprises for building up crop value chains in select by-crops of Telangana.
As very few agri graduates and post graduates are inclined towards agri-preneurship as well the emerging opportunities in the startup ecosystem, PJTSAU has created AgHub, a first-of-its-kind innovation hub to promote innovation and entrepreneurship in agriculture, university officials said.
The officials stated that the AgHub would focus on three core areas — innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem through promotion of startups, which includes sensitisation, ideation, innovation grants, incubation, acceleration and seed funding; research ecosystem through promotion of translational research to post-graduates, Ph.D scholars and scientists; and finally, rural innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem through promotion of rural entrepreneurs and FPOs.
Recognising the need to foster entrepreneurial climate in Telangana, the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) gave a grant of ₹9 crore to PJTSAU in April 2021 this year for a five-year programme. AgHub is a NABARD-funded incubator under its Rural Business Incubation Scheme.