YOUNG, spirited entrepreneurs — enabled by growing branchless banking and business building websites — are confidently venturing into agribusiness start-ups.

Officials of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan say out of 4,587 new companies registered in FY14, 195 were related to corporate agricultural farming. Initially, only big companies used to set up such firms as their subsidiaries, but now smaller, independent enterprises are also coming up, they add.

Corporate agricultural farming companies are involved in diverse activities, ranging from branded rice processing to fruits and vegetable production, juice and pulp extraction and packaging and so on. But business start-ups in livestock and the dairy sector — and in agricultural support services like limited solar power units, biogas plants and farming consultancies etc — are also popping up.


In many parts of rural Punjab and Sindh, renting of solar-powered tubewells, installation of community-dedicated solar power panels, and commercial access to common silos for storage of grains are becoming popular


The introduction of door-to-door supply of milk by Dairyland (Pvt.) Ltd is an example of business start-ups that have emerged in the last few years in response to changing lifestyles and tastes. People who still prefer fresh milk over packaged milk but don’t want to buy it from retail outlets because of hygiene considerations are now switching over to ‘Day Fresh’ milk, delivered to their home ‘free of cost’.

Meanwhile, government officials, NGO workers and casual travelers can now enjoy air-conditioned rooms even at a modest but well-kept hotel in such faraway places in Sindh like Umerkot, thanks to the biogas plant that the hotel management has installed there, the husband of a young female official of the Sindh Education Foundation who recently accompanied his spouse there told Dawn.

He said he was pleasantly surprised to see during his week-long tour of rural Sindh that at some dedicated shops equipped with generators, cell phones and laptops are charged for a fee and “people like us and even local people frequent those shops to avail this service. Interestingly, at some places, just one owner has rented out a couple of generators to these shop owners, and he too earns a decent living by this activity.”

Such least-noticed activities are a preamble to the more formal business start-ups that are likely to emerge in response to the changing rural lifestyle and increasing urban-rural interactions.

Capitalising on the ever-increasing outreach of information technology in developing business start-ups in Pakistan, as is being done elsewhere in the world, several NGOs and dedicated websites are helping young entrepreneurs initiate business start-ups, says Syed Waqas Ahmed, a software engineer and a website developer.

Startup.pk is one such website, and the Aman Foundation and Injaz Pakistan are among such NGOs. This month, these two NGOs introduced a programme titled ‘Pakistan Business Startup’ to provide practical guidance and seed money to young entrepreneurs.

In many parts of rural Punjab and Sindh, renting of solar-powered tubewells, installation of community-dedicated solar power panels, and commercial access to common silos for storage of grains are becoming popular day by day, growers say. Once such activities become a bit more organised, they would set examples of business start-ups in the agriculture sector for others to follow.

Recently, the Pakistan Agriculture Research Council developed a new crossbreed of chicken that can live as a scavenger bird and lay 170-180 eggs per year, compared to 70-80 obtained from traditional indigenous poultry birds.

One of the National Agricultural Research Centre’s projects is to supply 15-day-old chicks of this breed. Entrepreneurs can purchase these chicks directly from the NARC or get them delivered at a given place, officials say.

These chicks need up to six months of rearing on just 25pc of commercial feed before they can start producing eggs. Six-month-old chickens can feed themselves on kitchen waste and through scavenging. At the age of six months, while cocks can be sold out for poultry meat, hens can be kept for egg-laying for the next one year. Rural women involved in rearing of these poultry birds sell the eggs locally.

Officials say the micro-loan scheme for farmers envisaged in this year’s budget will provide more support to start-ups. From hosting a website or blog to opening online retail outlets to setting up poultry feed and fertiliser sale points to mushroom farming to providing storage services for grains and food items — there is a long list of possible agricultural business start-ups.

In addition to that, there is great demand for agricultural consultancy services, and some companies have emerged to meet this demand in recent years. FARMWELL, a private company, for example, is already engaged in half a dozen consultancy projects, including those of the Sindh government and USAID. One of the projects relates to capacity building of subsistence farmers in Khairpur district.

Some people complain that whereas private companies that provide consultancy in foreign-funded projects immediately get even 100pc locally funded government contracts, local consultancy firms, which don’t enjoy foreign support, are often neglected.

Published in Dawn, Economic & Business, August 25th, 2014

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