Agribusiness incubation is a process which focuses on nurturing innovative start-ups that have high growth potential to become competitive agribusinesses by serving, adding value or linking to farm producers (InfoDev, 2013). Agribusiness incubation entails directly working with early stage enterprises and facilitation of their growth through a number of services (shared facilities and equipment, business development, technology, finance, mentoring and networking). The incubation ecosystem for agriculture is in the nascent stages of development when compared to the incubation ecosystem in other sectors such as Information Technology, CleanTech and HealthCare. The start-ups in agriculture need sector-specific incubation support including access to the knowledge, resources and agribusiness networks. Many of the start-ups also need to reach out to a large number of stakeholders in the agriculture value chains. Many start-ups working in the agriculture incubation ecosystem lack agricultural background and hence need technical support including mentoring and technology validation.

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