S. Vishnu Sharma
IITMIC has collaborated with Samunnati Foundation which is a non-profit subsidiary of Samunnati Financial Intermediation and Services Private Limited.
The collaboration between IITMIC and Samunnati Foundation has been fostered with an objective of encouraging innovative technologies in agriculture and allied areas in India.
IITMIC and Samunnati Foundation
IITMIC and Samunnati Foundation have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to promote agritech startups to improve farmer incomes, reduce waste and encourage sustainable agriculture.
Through this partnership, the organizations will provide incubation support/facilities to entrepreneurial ventures, prepare position papers and propose policy recommendations.
Collaboration
This collaboration ties into Samunnati Foundation’s goal of creating a tangible difference in the lives of entrepreneurs among unserved/underserved agricultural communities.
By partnering with IITMIC, Samunnati aims to provide strategic and operational guidance, training, mentoring, networking, and other necessary resources to help India’s visionary agritech startups establish themselves and scale their presence.
Views
Anilkumar SG, Founder and CEO of Samunnati Foundation shared his views on the partnership between IITMIC and Samunnati Foundation.
‘We as a country are witnessing a buoyancy in the entrepreneurial energy especially in agriculture. It is heartening to see several youngsters from IIT/IIMs taking up entrepreneurship in agriculture.’
We also see a lot of private capital flowing into these young start-ups, he said. Speaking about the collaboration between IITMIC and Samunnati Foundation he said being an eco-system player, Samunnati aims to nurture this entrepreneurial energy by collaborating with premier institutions to incubate, nurture and scale these ideas which can transform the agri space in this country with focus on the small holder farmer.
We are excited about this partnership with IITMIC, which has been the cradle for many deep tech and social startups that have scaled successfully.
With IITMIC focusing on agriculture, we are confident that the eco-system will see a huge fillip to start ups in agriculture, he said.
Outcome
President of IITMIC Professor Ashok Jhunjhunwala spoke on the outcome of the collaboration between Samunnati Foundation and IITMIC. Professor Ashok is also the president of IIT Madras Research Park.
This partnership between IITMIC and Samunnati Foundation focusses on encouraging innovative technologies in agriculture and allied areas, he said.
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‘We will work together in developing the ecosystem necessary to support entrepreneurs, and jointly incubate startups in this space.’
This partnership between IITMIC and Samunnati Foundation will offer mentoring support for product development, advisory services, networking for business development, training, funding assistance and technological support and will focus on strengthening the agriculture entrepreneurial ecosystem, said Professor Ashok.
Key areas
Key areas and technologies which will be jointly explored under the collaboration between IITMIC and Samunnati Foundation are:
1. Promotion of Alternative crops – Research on the types of Millets and promotion of millet-based menus through commercialization of millet food items.
2. Adopting a green agricultural ecosystem- green agricultural machinery, solar pumps, finance related technology products, electric vehicles for Agri transport
3. Food processing technologies- To look at indigenously developed medium scale technology to pre-process packaged food locally while retaining nutritional quality.
4. Support services for agricultural community- To look at supporting farmers through enabling purchase and sale of produce, finance, insurance against price & weather fluctuations, agricultural advisories, transport & agricultural machinery hire and labor hire.
About IITMIC
IIT Madras Incubation Cell (IITMIC) has emerged as India’s leading Deep Technology Startup hub with Innovation and Impact as key differentiators/drivers.
Over the last 8 years of its operations, IITMIC has overseen more than 244 new incubations, founded by IITM members (faculty, staff, students, and alumni) and external entrepreneurs (48%).
The companies span the breadth of deep tech areas in globally critical domains, including manufacturing, robotics, energy, e-mobility, IoT, data sciences, healthcare, water, agri-tech. Today, the incubated startups are together valued at close to ₹11500 crores and have created more than 5200 direct jobs.
About IIT Madras
Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM) was established in 1959 by the Government of India as an ‘Institute of National Importance.’
The activities of the Institute in various fields of Science and Technology are carried out in 16 academic departments and several advanced interdisciplinary research academic centres.
The Institute offers undergraduate and postgraduate programmes leading to B.Tech., M.Sc., M.B.A., M.Tech., M.S., and Ph.D., degrees in a variety of specialisations.
IITM is a residential institute with more than 600 faculty and 9,500 students. Students from 18 countries are enrolled here. IITM fosters an active entrepreneurial culture with strong curricular support and through the IITM Incubation Cell .