Under the auspices of the XIIth Plan Scheme of the National Agricultural Innovation Fund (NAIF - Component II), ICAR launched the Agri-Business incubation (ABI) Centre. The goal of this program is to provide the necessary physical, technical, business, and networking support to facilitate emerging agri-businesses and entrepreneurship as well as to incubate novel, commercial, and potentially game-changing innovations. The program also offers services to help incubate and improve their business ideas and validate their products before launching a full-fledged business.
The mission of CitriHub – the ABI Centre at ICAR-CCRI is to Improve the well-being of the citrus stakeholders with improved and innovative citrus-based products and services through technology commercialization and entrepreneurship development in order to realize the larger goal of fostering agri partnership and innovation in the field of citriculture by creating entrepreneurial ecosystems for current and future entrepreneurs. The main objective of the ABI is to create more opportunities for self-employment and make entrepreneurial communities more competitive and prosperous for sustainable and inclusive growth.
The major activities of ABI are recognizing citrus-based innovative business ideas, promising technologies, and potential business ventures; entrepreneurship development programs, and providing following business incubation support to entrepreneurs.
Technological and Business Mentoring: ABI at ICAR-CCRI provides mentorship to entrepreneurs during the incubation period at the institute. Mentors help in ideation (generation, validation, and improvement), product/prototype development and refinement, pilot scale testing (for processed citrus products), and validation based on feedback from beta customers. Technical guidance is provided throughout the incubation process. In addition, ABI also helps in registration/certification (e.g. Udyam Aadhaar, FSSAI, etc.).
Capacity Building and Skill Development: ICAR-CCRI has well-developed laboratories and farm infrastructure for conducting hands-on training on citriculture-based technologies. Incubatees can undergo skill training in potential technologies (e.g. nursery production, fruit processing, etc.).
Funding Facilitation: ABI assists the incubates in the development and/or improvement of business plans, pitch preparation, and project presentation to attract grants, seed funders, angel investors, or venture capitalists. Linkages will be developed among entrepreneurs and government funding agencies.
Brand building: ABI extends its support to incubate logo design, product promotion, and market networking to a certain extent.
Intellectual Property Management: ABI helps incubates in the protection of intellectual property issues if any arise during the period of incubation at ICAR-CCRI. Mentors will help in filing the patent/trademark of the process/product/brand developed during incubation.