MSME’s incubation centres to promote entrepreneurship in agri-industry

The Dollar Business Bureau The Union Minister for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME), Kalraj Mishra, on Wednesday, launched a ‘Scheme for promoting Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Agro Industry’. Speaking on the occasion, the Union Minister said that the scheme was aimed at setting up network and incubation centres for the promotion of start-ups for innovation and entrepreneurship in the agro-industry. This scheme has got its origin in the announcement made by the Union Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley in his budget speech, to set up a ‘Technology Centre Network’ to promote Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Agro Industry with a fund of Rs 200 crore. Referring to the budget speech, Kalraj Mishra also highlighted about the need for implementation of a programme to facilitate forward and backward linkages with multiple chain of manufacturing and service delivery, as said by the Union Finance Minister. The MSME Minister further recalled about the Finance Minister’s statement towards setting up of 500 incubation centres across the country as a part of the scheme. Kalraj Mishra further informed that the scheme will be implemented under three components which include creation of data base of technologies available with government or private agencies, setting up of Network of Technology Centres for handholding of prospective entrepreneurs of MSME sector, among others. Under the component to identify and develop the required skilled human resources for mentoring the incubatees in the centres, the Minister informed that special efforts would be made to further the role of Indian MSMEs in a global economy. With an estimated expenditure of Rs 17.5 crore, surveys, studies, exposure visits, engagement of consultants including monitoring and evaluation, among other capacity building activities, would be conducted, the Minister informed. As a part of the scheme, the Livelihood Business Incubators (LBI) would also set up under the Public -Private-Partnership (PPP) mode, under the National Small Industries Corporation (NSIC), among other partners, to replicate the MSME’s already-existing ‘Rapid Incubation Model’. For this purpose, a total budget of Rs 62.50 crore has been allocated for setting up 80 LBIs adequately skilling a targeted 1,04,000 number of youth over a period of three years, the Minister added. Besides this, a budget of Rs 61.50 crore for setting up 30 Technology Business Incubators (TBI), Rs 60 crore to create framework for Start-up Promotion through Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI), have been allocated under other levels of the scheme implementation.  

This article was published on March 18, 2015.