Class of 2015

Innotech Villages

Name of the Social Entrepreneur

Mr Ashwini Kumar

Area of Operation

Navapur Taluka, Nandurbar District, Maharashtra

About the Venture

It is trying to be a technology field testing (Socio-technological) service provider to all the organizations, institutions and individuals involved in the generation and dissemination of agricultural technologies. It wants to test technologies by involving farmers and local admins for collecting the feedback inputs. On the basis of the data analysis, it will help the technology developer in getting to a successful commercialization strategy by bridging the feedback gap between the R&D work and the farmers. Before approaching technology developers for the services to develop an understanding, Innotech Villages is doing the following activities: Research work- Agricultural technology needs and gaps analysis Providing Agro- advisory Services to farmers: Building a network of trusted farmers by providing them technical guidance on farming on profit sharing basis. The farmers and their fields are required for our field testing services. A technology hiring centre to provide agricultural technologies (farm operations machinery and low cost drudgery reducing equipment and tools) on rent, and a post-harvesting agro-processing centre to provide primary processing facilities to the farmers. This activity is to understand the different ways of increasing the use of technologies among farmers and for its own sustainability. It intends to achieve the following impact: 1.Reduction in instances of technology failures 2.Improvisations resulting from holistic field test report and farmer feedback 3.Increased awareness among farmers about rural technologies 4.Better cost benefit ratio to farmers after adopting our suggested technologies 5.Decrease in drudgery in farm operations 6.Increase in the consumption of the selected technologies among farmers