A New Breed of Entrepreneurship | Milaap

A New Breed of Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship is a critical element in the growth of any economy in the world and the same goes for India as well. India is going to be one of the superpowers in world economy in near future and a vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem will going to play a huge role in it. Liberalization of economy started by the P.V. Narasimha Rao government in 1991 and the Information Technology boom of the mid and late 90’s have ushered in tremendous changes and set the stage for a wave of entrepreneurship taking India by storm and since then it has been expanding and growing stronger. India has given some of the notable entrepreneurs to the world. Jamsetji Tata, Dhirubhai Ambani, N. R. Narayana Murthy and other Infosys founding members, Shiv Nadar, Azim Premji, Phanindra Reddy Sama, Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal are few of them. Before I go forward let me quote the definition of entrepreneurship given by Investopedia. It says “An individual who, rather than working as an employee, runs a small business and assumes all the risk and reward of a given business venture, idea, or good or service offered for sale. The entrepreneur is commonly seen as a business leader and innovator of new ideas and business processes.”According to Subramanian Ramadorai (Former CEO and MD of Tata Consultancy Services), “entrepreneurship is an outlook; an outlook which, when combined with entrepreneurial skills, helps people succeed in endeavors across all dimensions. So, you could be with a large enterprise or an NGO and yet be entrepreneurial. I will deal with both this traditional and broader meanings of the term.” So it is a myth that entrepreneurship or entrepreneurial skills are limited to those people starting companies. And farmers are the best example of entrepreneurs also known as “Agripreneurs”. They do not work under anyone. They take risks, which is the very basic trait of any entrepreneur across the world. But we hardly talk about this class of entrepreneurs. As a Milaap fellow I am in Nalanda district which comes under the state of Bihar. Nalanda is emerging as export hub of agriculture products. And the reason behind this emergence is the farmers who are choosing new methods and latest technologies over conventional ways of farming. [caption id="attachment_6875" align="alignnone" width="625"]Farmers in Sohdih with government officials Farmers in Sohdih with government officials[/caption]Rakesh Kumar, a farmer from Sohdih village in Biharsharif block of Nalanda district is one of them. Rakesh holds the world record of highest per-hectare potato yield, which stands at 1,088 quintals per hectare. And the interesting thing is that he broke the record of a fellow farmer based in Nalanda itself, who held the previous record of highest per-hectare potato yield of 729 quintals. Not only this, he also holds the world record of highest per-hectare onion yield, which stands at 660 quintal onions per hectare. The previous record of highest yield of onion was 550 quintals per hectare held by a farmer in the Netherlands. Farmers of the same village (Sohdih) in Nalanda also hold the world record of producing 224 quintals of paddy per hectare. The farmers of the locality exported bitter gourd (karela) and onions to countries like Bangladesh and Nepal and organic vegetables grown are regularly exported to different states of the country.If we can create IT hubs like Bangalore and Gurgaon then why not create Agri hubs in India where farmers across the country can come and experiment different methods of farming for higher yield. Still more than 60 % of the population resides in villages and are dependent on agriculture. Once Mahatma Gandhi said that "The future of India lies in its villages". And the only way we can make it bright is by providing a better ecosystem in Rural India. Government needs to make efforts and encourage agripreneurship by providing training and also facilities in the rural areas. Picture Credit:  thegoan.net