Background
Hon’ble Finance Minister, in the Budget Speech 2022-23, announced that, “A Fund
with blended capital, raised under the co-investment model, will be facilitated
through NABARD. This is to finance start-ups for agriculture & rural
enterprise,
relevant for farm produce value chain. The activities for these start-ups will
include, inter alia, support for FPOs, machinery for farmers on rental basis at
farm level, and technology including IT-based support.”
In this background, a Fund, viz., “AgriSURE – Agri Fund for Start Ups &
Rural
Enterprises”, to support innovative, technology driven, high-risk, high-impact
activities in agriculture and allied areas is set up. GoI and NABARD are
sponsoring agencies for the Fund.
The Fund intends to invest in Sector Specific AIFs, Sector Agnostic AIFs, Debt
AIFs and Direct Equity Investment in start-ups.
The total corpus of the Fund is ₹750 crore. Of this, ₹250 crore each is
contributed by the Government of India and NABARD respectively and ₹250 crore is
to be mobilised from other institutions including private investors.
The Fund is registered as a Category-II Alternative Investment Fund with SEBI.
NABVENTURES Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of NABARD is the Investment Manager
to the Fund.
Objectives of Agri SURE Fund:
The objectives of the AgriSURE Fund include, but not be limited to, providing
funding support for the following.
- To create an investment-friendly climate for start-ups related to
agriculture and allied activities and increase their investment absorption
capacities.
- To accelerate the growth of start-ups in the agri ecosystem.
- Increase and sustain capital commitments to sector specific AIFs in
order to enable them to provide equity support to Agri & Agri-tech
start-ups
engaged in serving farmers and FPOs/FPCs/Primary Cooperative Societies.
- Increase average size and number of investments by Alternative
Investment Funds in Agri & Agri-tech start-ups.
- To encourage young entrepreneurs with innovative, technology-driven ideas
and willingness to take high-risk, while engaging in high-impact activities
in agriculture and Agri-tech.
- To provide liquidity to existing Agri & Agri-tech start-ups that are
unable to upscale their business due to dearth of access to various kinds of
financing like equity, debt instruments, etc.
- To give a boost to opportunities available for efficient and more
profitable forward and backward linkage systems in the rural space that help
make the farm produce value chain system stronger, robust and more
systematic by encouraging start-ups operating in these activities and bring
in new entrepreneurs into this field of agri-business.
- To enlist more players in the farm related ecosystem for enabling
FPOs/FPCs/ Primary Cooperative Societies to access latest automated farm
processes and machinery through Agri tech Start-ups.
- To create additional employment opportunities for the technically
qualified rural and urban youth to look up to agriculture as a business
opportunity.
- To retain the existing rural youth in agriculture and encourage the
younger generation to take to agriculture by providing newer technologies,
techniques and equipments at their doorsteps from time to time. By
encouraging the urban youth to establish new Start-ups in the rural
agricultural ecosystem to have a win-win situation for both young farmers
and the urban entrepreneurs by working in their respective domains to
benefit each other.
- To attract more investment in the agri and rural start-up ecosystem by
making contribution to various Alternative Investment Funds.
Target Beneficiaries from Fund
- The Fund envisages to support about 85 Start-ups by the end of the Fund
life with variable ticket size of upto ₹25 crore under the two schemes of
the Fund.
- The target beneficiaries will include Start-ups working in agriculture
and rural development sector and will include, but not limited to, Agritech,
Food Processing, Animal Husbandry, Fisheries, Supply Chain Management, Farm
Mechanisation, Biotechnology, Waste Management, Renewable energy, Agri Value
Chain including Primary Cooperative Societies development, Support for FPOs,
Technology support at Farm level and Climate change.
- The ticket size and number of investments may undergo variations,
depending on investment absorption capacity of the entrepreneurs/
enterprises and market conditions within the ecosystem and the like.