Agri Summit 2018

Date:14 ^th & 15 ^th September 2018

Agri Summit, the flagship event by the students of MBA - Agribusiness at Symbiosis Institute of International Business was conducted as a two day event, on 14 th and 15 th of September 2018. On the first day, the students had the competition ‘Kritansh’, which was an event for best manager. The winner was decided after a series of debates, quizzes and interviews. The winner of ‘Kritansh’ was awarded a cash prize. On the second day of the event, the students got an opportunity to listen to the esteemed speakers from various industries, Mr. Subbarao Appemane, Senior VP – Mahyco; Mr. Vijaykumar Chole, VP – BVG; Mr. Devendra Gupta, Director – ECOZEN Solutions; Mr. Anupam Satpathy, Marketing Head – Mahindra Group; Mr. Bakul Joshi, Brand Protection Leader – FMC Corporation; Mr. Desh Ratna, President – Cadila Agro; Dr. Sudhir Kumar Goel, Ex-ACS, Maharashtra and Mr. Jitendra Singhal, GM – Godrej Agrovet Ltd. The speakers spoke about the importance of accepting GMO’s in our society, and why it is so difficult to implement GM seeds into farmer crop cycles. The speakers also enlightened the students about the current problems in agriculture infrastructure in India, post-harvest storage, and implementation of new technology in our agricultural practices. The students were introduced to a variety of opportunities in the agri sector, both private and government sectors. It was communicated to the students that they should adopt the roles of ‘Agripreneurs’, like Mr Devendra Gupta, creating his unique solution to post harvest storage – Ecofrost, in order to improve the situation of the Indian farmer. The students were motivated when they were told about the government financing agriculture based start-ups, with a total of 135 agri based start-ups being financed in the year 2017. They were told about the SMS structure of priority, namely soil, moisture and security, and were told to focus on these key areas along with market integration, crop production, post-harvest infrastructure and not to underestimate the small farmers and help them with doubling their income by 2022. Mahyco, the prime sponsor of Agri Summit, had conducted a case study competition called Aavahan, during the course of Agri Summit. Selected teams were asked to present theirs views on problems related to demand forecasting to a panel of judges. Out of 4 Finalist teams, one was deemed as winner who bagged the cash prize. The event ended with an interactive question and answer session, where the students and participants were enthusiastically asking questions about improving the situation of agriculture in India. With a key speech from Dr. Sudhir Kumar Goel, the event ended reminding the students of their role in the society as agriculture students.