India Entrepreneurship Roundup

On our last day in Mumbai, the India Agriculture Study tour team got together to discuss and record their final lessons learned from two weeks in India. Our last session of the day involved identifying the top agricultural business ideas that came out of the trip. Here’s a number of them from all 10 MIT MBA students:

·         Create a Indian domestic chain of urban organic food stores
·         Start an organic food export chain for high value non perishables such as teas, spices, cocoa
·         Form an organization to build incentivizes for farmers to create cooperatives
·         Build a business around bringing back the originality of the agricultural products to the Indian domestic market
·         Solve the spoilage rate problem through low cost cold storage solutions
·         Create food transport hubs
·         Develop "on the farm" basic processing techniques
·         Build schemes to prepay farmers for products like organic milk
·         Form an organization to feed/support families during the transition from conventional to organic farming
·         Use the cold chain from other sectors such as health (vaccines) for perishables transport from rural areas
·         Encourage Indian consumers to buy plots of organic farms, taking part in the entire process
·         Create a Kiva model for farming (support networks, volunteer and travel programs)

While the class is over, our creativity around agricultural innovation is not. Teams of students are forming around some of our final debrief ideas. If you’re interested in getting involved, feel free to email me at edhawan@mit.edu.

Comments

[ChandraRekha]

Hi... though am not in the agri field... i the distress of Indian farmers has encouraged me to think about their problems... and i share similar ideas and have plans to venture...
please let me knw if i can join u..
Thanx.

[Trilok Sundar Mohanty]

I have been doing research at my personal level since 2000. I am an M.Sc(Ag.) in Mycology and Plant Pathology -1974 and superannuated from the Govt. service as Dy. Director in the Department of Agriculture, Govt. of Odisha, India on 31.3.2009. My key areas of interest are mostly in the fields of Genetic Changes/Transfer by asexual, nonchemical/mutagens.
I have been successful in inducing remarkable morphological changes in various crops like Brinjal, Tomato, Cowpea, and Bean. Some of these are indicated below:
1. Brinjal - Mutated plant bears fruits of different shapes and colors.
2. Tomato - Mutated plant bears flowers with 13 petals against 6 petals, Calyx increased to 8 against 6, Keeping quality increased to 4 weeks at room temperature around 35 degree Celsius.
3. Cowpea - Mutated plant bears Pentafoliate leaves against trifoliate character, F1 Generation shows Quadrifoliate/Pentafoliate character.
4. Bean - Mutated Bean plant Pentafoliate leaves against trifoliate character.

As genetic change takes place in same generation time required for developing a variety will be less. Other field crops and vegetables can be tried for improvement.
Due to lack of adequate institutional financial support, I am unable to proceed on this search work with the desired pace. May be, some sort of strategic tie-ups could be more effective in this endeavor.
I would solicit your kind advice in this regard, as I am sure this research apart from being exciting and thrilling in the domain of Agriculture science ,would bring immense benefit to the grower at a much lesser cost. Photographs concerned can be sent on demand.
Thanks
With Regards
T.S.Mohanty

[raghuramsengolan]

I have the innovative solution to save the agriculture products with low cost in india

[Terry Young]

Contributions of the results of some of the final debrief ideas could be posted as articles or posts on Beyond the First World (http://beyondthefirstworld.com)
If interested in posting, send brief to Editor, Terry Young
terryyoung@beyondthefirstworld.com