Tap PedalStart’s incubation programme for Agritech start-ups and benefit from it

Here is an opportunity to learn from top industry experts and mentors on how to develop your idea and build a successful Agritech venture. Applications are open for a six-week intensive incubation programme of PedalStart, which is India’s fast-growing founders’ community that works with start-ups in each phase of their journey.

Agcubator is a community-based incubator programme for early-stage ventures in the Agritech domain. It involves six weeks of intensive virtual incubation. A total of 20 start-ups will be selected for the cohort, on completion of which ₹1.25 crore of angel funds will be available for a few select ventures and ₹50 lakhs in equity gullak.

Agcubator is a selective platform for founders of Agritech start-ups to learn to build successful ventures. The programme will provide founders an opportunity to test out new technologies, establish business connects and forge long-term partnerships.

After the screening process, the top 20 start-ups will learn from industry experts and mentors such as Sanjay Sacheti, Country Head, Olam Agri; Agam Khare, Founder and CEO, Absolute; Vamsi Udayagiri, Founder and CEO, Hesa; Tauseef Khan, Co-founder and CEO, Gramophone; and, Varun Khanna, Founder and CEO, Otipy and Crofarm.

The six-week programme will provide intense learning, innovation and field exposure. In the first week, the participants will be exposed to ideation and positioning, followed by execution and revenue in the second week, sales and marketing in the third, supply chain and operations in the fourth, technology and scale in the fifth, and fund raising in the sixth week.

The programme lead for the cohort is M. Ramakrishnan, an Agritech expert and angel investor. A mechanical engineering graduate from the Delhi College of Engineering and an MBA from MDI Gurgaon, Ramakrishnan has decades of experience in multiple industry verticals, including as a consultant in Accenture. He has been working in the Agritech space for over five years and has deep connections in the ecosystem, including with multiple funded and early-stage start-ups. He has helped raise venture capital funds for Agritech ventures. Ramakrishnan says “There is a clear gap in the ecosystem… there are no accelelerator programs wherein a strat-up ecosystem insider, or a well-established-Founder is helping other early-stage start-ups; that is the gap we are addressing through this program, with the help of strong mentors”.

The cohort will start on February 15 and Agritech ventures right from the proof-of-concept stage can apply for this programme. Start-ups in sub-sectors such as ag-biotech, input market linkage, precision agriculture, agri-robotics, food quality, processing, logistics and warehousing, animal related and output market linkage are all eligible to apply for this programme.

For its part, PedalStart will charge 4 per cent advisory equity from the top five start-ups. A unique aspect of this programme is the Equity gullak, which is an equity exchange/sharing programme where the top five start-ups will get a chance to share 1 per cent of their equity in a pool that will then be shared among the founders of those five start-ups. Which means, every founder will have 0.2 per cent equity of each start-up through the pool.

Check out https://cohort.pedalstart.com/agcubator/ for more details.