Critical factors for the success of agripreneur

Taken from http://www.agriclinics.net/evaluation/midtermevaluationreport.pdf

Critical factors for the success of agripreneur

During the course of study on discussions with the agripreneurs the following factors were recognized as critical to their success.

Marketability of the Project:
one of the key factors in the success of the agriventure

has been the product or service demand. Certain projects like ACABC, floriculture

and Seed production have ready market and can be sold easily. Therefore the

selection of project is very important. Those ventures that have been successful have attributed their success to the high demand of their product and services. This was further proven by the data collected during the survey. More than half of the ventures set up are of ACABC and other project areas like horticulture Clinics, veterinary clinics, soil testing labs and crop protection centers are very few in numbers. Thus, focus of a majority of ventures has been on service related activities. Marketing related projects (Direct/Related markets) accounted for only 4.1% of the total number. The scheme also promoted projects in innovative areas like tissue culture, agri journalism, eco-tourism, and agri— insurance and so on, but less than 1% of the projects set up covered these sectors. Depending on the project marketability the popularity of the projects has been assessed.

One stop shop for the farmers:
in case of ACABC the ventures have proved to be a

success because they serve as one stop shop for the farmers. Where they are not

only able to get free of cost advices regarding production, they also have access to

the desired inputs in terms of seeds, fertilizers and so on. This kind of multifaceted

function has led to the success of the ventures. 39% of the farmer’s respondent that

the single window advisory was one of the most important benefits that they derived

from ACABC. Thus convenience and single window availability of advisory services

one of the success factors for successful ventures.

Farmer’s Relationship:
attributing to the success of the agri ventures is the farmer’s

network built during the course of time. Through timely and quality service the

ventures have been able to establish good relations with the farmers thus creating a

network of farmers who keep on increasing with the word of mouth. This also creates

loyalty within the farming community and they keep their association with the

agripreneur.

Quality Assurance: these days when duplicate fertilizers and poor quality inputs are

readily available in the market, farmers usually fall prey to them and ruin the crops.

Services provided by the agripreneurs are genuine and many a times comes with

quality assurance. Moreover these entrepreneurs are educated and from agriculture

background so they have far better understanding and technical knowledge which

many a times farmers do not have. This is one factor which has contributed to the

success of agriventure.

Reliable information: the information and knowledge gained during the training is

considered to be valuable and is passed on to the farmers. Availability of reliable

information has proved to be one of the factors for the success of the enterprise.