K’taka govt inks MoUs to scale up women-led enterprises, facilitate organic farmers

PTI, Jun 22, 2022, 8:02 PM IST

Representative Image (Source: Dreamstime)

Karnataka government on Wednesday inked two memoranda of understanding (MoUs) to further strengthen the economic activities of women self-help groups and facilitate organic farmers to sell their produce directly to consumers.

Out of the two MoUs, one was with IIM-B, a business school to help women self-help groups, and the other with Subhiksha, a vertically integrated multi-state co-operative society that promotes organic farming. The MoUs were exchanged in the presence of Minister for Livelihood C N Ashwath Narayan.

On behalf of the government, Sanjeevini – Karnataka State Rural Livelihood Promotion Society (KSRLPS) and National Rural Economic Transformation Programme (NRETP), exchanged MoUs with the institutions, a release from his office said.

Narayan said IIM-B Incubator for women SHGs would be a platform that helps women entrepreneurs get access to resources. It would enable them to scale up existing women-owned/women-led growth-oriented enterprises, he said. The intended incubator would focus on supporting rural home-grown entrepreneurs, especially women, who face additional constraints in accessing such services, he said.

The aim of the initiative is to scale up at least 100-150 existing women-owned/women-led growth-oriented enterprises in the State.

Further, it is expected that the MoU would facilitate creating business models for generating local employment, improving the creditworthiness of enterprises, enabling access to credit from formal financial institutions, and capacitating women entrepreneurs to run businesses themselves.

About MoU with ‘Subhikha’, the Minister said it would create a direct linkage with the consumers through the online marketing platform ‘Subhiksha Farmers to Consumers’ App. It would fetch 73 percent of the MRP directly to the farmers’ account and also provide traceability to consumers of every item that is procured through the platform along with a ‘Note from the Farmer’ to introduce the farmer’s family to the consumer.

Other advantages are that it would assist in high-order food processing, supply quality inputs to farmer members at reasonable costs, provide farm advisory services, incentivize farmers for adopting ‘Good Agricultural Practices’ and enable access to farm data on soil fertility, and moisture levels, he added.