"Many Climate Smart Agricultural (CSA) technologies fail to achieve their full potential impact due to low levels of adoption by smallholder farmers and difficulties in scaling CSA. This paper presents how small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can act as change agents for the uptake of CSA technologies where their business models may be seen as adoption and scaling mechanisms. Drawing upon our fieldwork in Punjab (India) during which over 100 respondents have been interviewed, critical issues and enabling factors for the business model of two types of SMEs, i.e. farmer cooperatives and individual service providers of climate smart technologies have been identified. Enabling factors supporting adoption are driven by scientific and practical evidence of CSA technologies, good partnership between SMEs and research institutes, good customer relationships and effective channels through farmers' field trials. Critical issues consist of distortive government subsidies on energy and the lack of market intelligence affecting the profitability of the business model. Scaling is enhanced through market intelligence and a favouring regulatory landscape. However, difficult socio-economic circumstances and distortive government subsidies limit the role of SMEs business model as mechanism for scaling."
"The agribusiness incubator in the state of Andhra Pradesh in India is the result of a partnership between the Indian government and an international crop-research organization that is a member of CGIAR, a global partnership of organizations seeking a food-secure future. As the incubator has developed, it has become relatively independent of its founders, the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and the Indian government’s Department of Science and Technology. From supporting small businesses that can bring new agricultural research and technology to market, ABI has become an incubator of incubators, and is now helping African incubators follow its model."
"In partnership with the ANDE India Chapter, GALI is working to increase understanding of acceleration and early stage ventures in India. This data summary includes information from 1,214 ventures operating in India, contributed by 26 accelerators."
"To understand the intermediary role of accelerators in the developing regional entrepreneurial ecosystem of Bangalore, we analyze data from 54 interviews with accelerator graduates, accelerator managers, and other ecosystem stakeholders, and from 49 websites, 13 online video interviews, 26 online news sources and 301 pages of policy documents. Specifically, we adopt a socially-situated entrepreneurial cognition approach to theorize how accelerator expertise, existing at a meso-level, intermediates between (micro-level) founders and the (macro-level). ecosystem. In our model, four types of accelerator expertise-connection, development, coordination, and selection-together increase stakeholders' commitment to the entrepreneurial ecosystem, leading to venture validation (success or failure) and ecosystem additionality. These findings indicate that accelerators contribute to ecosystems in a way that is distinct from, but supportive of, building individual ventures."
SMEs make up a large part of businesses, jobs, and GHG emissions. A concerted effort towards climate action in India has to include how we engage and support small and growing businesses.
In 2020, the Metrics from the Ground Up conference took place as a track alongside the Sankalp Global Summit. The event gave ANDE members and the community in India (and beyond) the chance to meet and share knowledge and best practices on impact measurement and management relevant to entrepreneurial support and the greater impact ecosystem.
This piece is part of a series under the theme of “Elevating Underrepresented Voices at ANDE.”
On September 24, 2020, Geigy Mathews and Denis Karema from Enviu hosted a Solution Salon entitled "Eliminating waste to 0% in the textile & food chain, impossible?" as part of ANDE's 2020 Annual Conference. The session highlighted the complex, multi-sector solutions that will be required in order to facilitate the transition towards fully circular textile and food sectors.
2019 was a promising year for the small and growing business (SGB) ecosystem. The recently released State of the Small and Growing Business Sector report from ANDE shows that a wide variety of investment vehicles were launched last year, committing capital close to $3 billion.