Enhancing Entrepreneurship Skills in Agricultural Marketing and Business Plan Development

GrowInnova in association with LI-BIRD organized a Short Course on ‘Enhancing Entrepreneurship Skills in Agricultural Marketing and Business Plan Development’ at Sauraha, Chitwan from 29 July to 1 August 2017. The four-day training was provided to Marketing/ Sales Officers, Seed Production Officers, Senior Field Technicians, and other professionals of the private sector and development organizations to enhance their knowledge and skills on entrepreneurship and business plan development for agricultural marketing.

In the context of Nepal, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) face a lot of challenges and hurdles in agricultural marketing such as small and scattered scale of productions, irregularity in supply and variety of items, and inability to meet demand volume etc. Besides these, entrepreneurs lack in basic knowledge and skills of business plan development. The problem is further exacerbated by the shortage of productive labor force caused by the prevalent youth out-migration. So, it is difficult for entrepreneurs to sustain their agri-businesses. Hence, it is very necessary to assist the entrepreneurs to develop their capacity on all intricacies of a business plan, help them expand their linkages within the marketing environment and build a trust-based relationship with various actors for promoting their agri-businesses.

This course was therefore tailored to make these market-based solutions work better for both the entrepreneurs and institutions that are involved in agri-businesses. The major course modules of this training were: principles and practices of agricultural marketing, business plan development required for successful agri-business, choosing right methods and techniques of business promotion, and intricacies of rural marketing and supply chain management.

Testimonials

“Though I am working on improving the livelihoods of people through the value chain, I was completely unaware of the concept of the value chain and how entrepreneurships can be flourished. The training taught me on several aspects of the value chain and agricultural marketing. It was an eye-opener for me to know the value of money for pricing of a product.”

– Uma Kumari Thapa, Agriculture Technician
Improving Livelihoods of Marginalized Communities (ILMC) Project, Salyan

“I found this training very fruitful because it has a much practical application on agricultural marketing and business plan development. Though I am a Marketing Research Officer, I had never realized what the value of money would be as time lapses by and how the pricing is fixed. The training further analyzed the problems of marketing and identified market-based solutions which I liked very much.”

– Puskar Sharma Rimal, Marketing Research Officer
Anmolbiu Pvt. Ltd., Bharatpur