Manav Rachna International University (MRIU), announced that its incubated start-up Tricho Agronica Pvt. Ltd. (TAPL) has been awarded its first grant of ₹1.72 crore by the Indian Oil Corporation Ltd (IOCL), India’s largest commercial enterprise. The capital was awarded to the start-up venture founded in April 2017, for the world’s first ‘innovative and eco-friendly bio-formulation against fungal pathogens in Tomato’.
This formulation has been developed by an all-women team from MRIU comprising Dr. Sarita Sachdeva, Professor & Dean Research, MRIU; Dr. Abhilasha Shourie, Professor & Head, Department of Biotechnology; Dr. Nidhi Didwania, Assistant Professor, Biotechnology and Deepti Sadana, Research Scholar, Biotechnology.
The team from MRIU is the only team from a private university to make it to the list of 40 start-ups, which have academic affiliation with IIMs, IITs and an international university.
Keeping in mind a farmer’s aspirations and the need to be eco-friendly, the team produced a ‘bio elixir’ which is a bio fungicide and a bio fertiliser. The product is 100 per cent organic, increases plant biomass and is the remedy for ‘Bull’s Eye’ pathogen that affects almost 60 per cent of the tomato crop in India.
The grant has been provided by IOCL under the ‘Start-up Sangam’ programme conceived by the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas along with the ten Oil & Gas PSUs. Under the programme, 40 start-ups have been awarded financial grants from a corpus of ₹320 crores pooled by the 10 PSUs.
An elated Dr. Sarita Sachdevasaid: “Indian Oil has shown tremendous confidence in the product and we will now attempt to gel it with IOCL agro oil which will increase the shelf life and efficacy of the product. We have already demonstrated a 25-35 per cent increase in tomato cultivation in Faridabad and are very confident of scaling up this project across the country. Over the next three years, our team will work towards translating this to a commercial scale.”.
Dr. Prashant Bhalla, President, Manav Rachna Educational Institutions said: “As an education service provider, our endeavour has always been to felicitate all round development, hence incubating entrepreneurial spirit is an integral part of our vision. So far, we have successfully incubated almost 70 companies in varied streams.This recognition (from IOCL) is a testimony to our efforts.”
The formal MoU was exchanged at the Compedium of Start-ups in Oil & Gas Sector on October 25 in Delhi, between R&D Centre, Indian Oil Corporation and Manav Rachna International University in the presence of Minister for Petroleum & Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan and Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog.