The aim is to find solutions for agri problems through technology. | Photo Credit: sesame

Start-ups invited to apply for Agriculture Grand Challenge-2 

C-CAMP’s has invited start-ups to apply before January 31 to get an investment of ₹25-50 lakh

by · The Hindu

C-CAMP’s Centre of Excellence for Agri Innovation, supported by Ktech which has launched Agriculture Grand Challenge-2 is now open to all start-ups across India.

The Agriculture Grand Challenges was officially launched at the Bengaluru Tech Summit 2023 on December 1, 2023. C-CAMP’s has invited start-ups to apply before January 31 to get an investment of ₹25-50 lakh. In this call, the problem statements have been classified into two groups of agriculture and allied.

Purpose of technology

In the agriculture group the call is for realising technology to increase shelf life and minimise post-harvest losses, technologies for plant pest and disease detection, monitoring and mitigation (the target crops are tomato, pomegranate, cotton and coffee) and technology for on-site drying and grading of cash crops.

In the animal husbandry/allied group the call is for realising novel artificial insemination techniques for cattle (for enhanced fertilization rates), developing cost-effective on-farm pregnancy detection kits for cattle to detect PAB/AGA/other hormones, affordable farmer-level mastitis detection and fast and accurate method for detection of contaminants in milk.

“We are looking for startups that have strong potential to transform key aspects of Indian agriculture in a disruptive manner. These start-ups should be able to solve one of these problems with a commercially viable and deployable solution at grass root level through deep science innovations,” states C-CAMP.

Who is eligible?

Applications are invited from participants that meet the following eligibility criteria: start-up should be registered in India, must be less than 10 years old, beneficiary has to be an Indian start-up, this support is not meant for Indian subsidiaries of MNCs/foreign companies, shareholding by Indian promoters in the beneficiary start-up should be at least 51%, start-up must develop deep-tech/deep-science solutions limited to the above defined problem statement(s) and the selected start-up will be incubated at C-CAMP and should develop and deploy MVP within 18 months of time. Link for application is http://tinyurl.com/ymruv4xs.