1- Startups in CASI

Transcript

Hello friends. In the last 5 weeks, we learnt about CASI, the machines it requires, its advantages and residue management. We also looked at the challenges we face if we are doing conservation agriculture. Now we will look at if there are any business opportunities in CASI in addition to doing just farming. We will see that there are such opportunities available and in today’s lesson we will look at the topic of startups in CASI. We will talk about how to set-up a startup under CASI and how to work with a business model under CASI.

Now what is a startup? Of late there is a growing trend of startup businesses in India. The Government of India has set up three criteria to define a startup. The first is that the business or venture should not be older than 10 years and it should be registered as a private limited company or partnership or via an LLP model. The second criterion is that the business turnover should not exceed 100 crores. And the final criterion is that the business should involve innovation and product or service improvement and should have scaling and employment generation potential. The above criteria’s need to be fulfilled in order to be registered as a startup.

Now we will try to understand the business ideas and areas where we can establish ourselves as a startup. The first thing that we had learnt was the availability of machines for CASI to be successful in India or EGP. So a startup can enter into the area of machine manufacturing and service provision. A lot of times it is the big farmers that have powerful tractors who work as service providers. Many times they complain of not having enough business for their services. So we will look into how we can overcome this and grow as a sustainable business model.

Some farmers not just became service providers but they also underwent training and started training other farmers. So with the success of CASI, its adoption area will increase and as a result the business of service providers would also increase.

One can also work as a retailer. There is also potential of a business venture into solving maintenance issues and providing on site home maintenance services as sometimes it gets difficult to find spare parts or resolve maintenance issues.

Second, from the perspective of farmers is the availability of quality inputs. When we do DSR, then the use of herbicide is very important. Seeds are required in both conventional agriculture and CASI. Once we have a relationship and network established with farmers then we can also provide quality seeds, fertilizers and pesticides to farmers.

Some have started providing 360 degree solutions to farmers where they offer certain packages to farmers and take responsibility for their crop from sowing till harvest and they also guarantee that there will be no decrease in their crop yield. We will look at such a case study in the coming lecture.

In West Bengal there was a case where some women and a local farmers group got into the production of mat nursery and started selling it to other farmers. They developed a business model around this activity.

There is also the scope of consultancy as this is a new technology and one can provide consultations and machinery to farmers.

Once we have established a network, then we can also get into output marketing. We will discuss the DeHaat model and how they buy maize from farmers and sell them to international and national markets. This proves beneficial to farmers and also profitable to DeHaat.

I will now provide some advice on how we can scale out a sustainable business model as one might feel that very few farmers are doing it and not much area is under its practice.

Our suggestion would be to always do it in a group as opposed to doing it individually. With a group approach as scaling takes place, our business would also increase at the same time. In West Bengal, conservation agriculture was started through multiple farmers’ clubs and hundreds of farmer clubs joined hands to expand conservation agriculture. So the bigger our network is, the bigger will our business grow. In Purnea, we worked through Aranyak company that was backed by JEEViKA in the promotion of conservation agriculture. So conservation agriculture can be promoted through a producer company.

When we introduce a new technology then a lot of new stakeholders also come in the picture. Like in the case of zero tillage machines, there are sellers who have never sold this machine or will be selling this machine. There will be people who will provide technical knowledge of this machine. So new stakeholders get involved with the technology and with old stakeholders who are already in the market and social system, a new type of structure and system is formed whom we call an innovation platform. We prepared an innovation platform under the SRFSI project and through this network we can promote conservation agriculture.

So this is how we prepare a new network which is efficient. It should put too much burden on farmers and should be profitable for the farmers and all the stakeholders. People will get involved in this new technology only when it is more profitable than the existing conventional system. So we have to make sure that all the parties involved in this technology like farmers, manufacturers, marketing, input retailers of seed and fertilizers, and everyone else involved find its adoption profitable.

We will soon look at the concept of micro entrepreneurs brought by DeHaat. They developed micro entrepreneurs at village level and connected farmers with them. They started providing end to end services to them. We would discuss this in detail as part of a case study.

So friends, conservation agriculture is in a way new for eastern gangetic plains and its area is growing very fast. There are a lot of opportunities available for new startups in this field.

Thank you.