NABARD

Work out which door is yours first

NABARD is not a place you send a pitch and wait. Ask what kind of thing you are before you pick a route. If you are a DPIIT-recognised company incorporated in India looking for equity, the AgriSURE Direct Scheme is the only route on NABARD's site you can approach yourself. If you want incubation, a workbench, mentoring or catalytic capital, your application goes to one of the nine Rural Business Incubation Centres, not to NABARD. If you are an agriculture graduate setting up a clinic or an agri-business, your route is the Agri Clinic and Agri Business Centres scheme and it starts at a bank. If you run a fund, the AIF window is yours.

AgriSURE

• Check the gate before anything else: the scheme states it invests only in startups recognised by DPIIT and incorporated in India. Get your DPIIT recognition in place first.
• Approach NABVENTURES directly at agrisure@nabard.org. The fund publishes a notice saying nothing is charged for seeking assistance and that people presenting themselves as its agents are not acting for it. If someone asks you for a fee to introduce you, that is your answer.
• Show the agriculture or rural link plainly. The fund's stated ground is agritech, food processing, animal husbandry, fisheries, supply chain, farm mechanisation, biotechnology, waste management, renewable energy, the agri value chain, support for farmer producer organisations, farm-level technology and climate change.
• It is an equity investor, so expect the diligence and the terms of one. It also says it may reinvest in companies that do well, so a first cheque is not the end of the conversation.

Incubation and catalytic capital

• Apply to the centre, on the centre's own page and timetable. NABARD publishes no founder-facing form, intake or eligibility test for the incubation centres or for the Rural Startup Catalytic Capital scheme.
• The scheme's own wording is that assistance reaches startups through incubation centres or NABARD subsidiaries. If you are not already with one of them, joining one is the step before the money.
• The nine centres sit at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, IIT Kharagpur, RVSKVV Gwalior, ICAR-NAARM, PJTSAU, Sardarkrushinagar Dantiwada Agricultural University, Rajiv Gandhi University, SKUAST-Kashmir and Kerala Agricultural University. Pick on sector fit and travel, not on the NABARD name — they run their own programmes.

Agri Clinic and Agri Business Centres

• Eligibility is about your qualification, not your company. Read the list carefully: there are marks thresholds on the diploma and intermediate routes, and some qualifications need a state government recommendation.
• Take the loan application form NABARD publishes to a financing bank. The subsidy is credit-linked and back-ended, and NABARD passes it to the bank rather than to you.
• NABARD publishes the scheme's revised guidelines and a later compendium of instructions alongside annual beneficiary lists. Read the latest circular before you build a plan on an older one.

Two things not to assume

• Refinance is not a founder product. NABARD refinances banks and cooperative institutions; a startup cannot apply for it.
• Several government schemes NABARD used to channel are marked closed or temporarily closed on its own index, including the Dairy Entrepreneurship Development Scheme and the livestock mission's entrepreneurship window. Check the index page before you plan around one.

The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) is India's apex development bank for agriculture and the rural economy, set up by Act 61 of 1981 and opened on 5 November 1982. It is wholly owned by the Government of India and works out of Bandra Kurla Complex in Mumbai, with regional offices in every state and district offices below them. Most of what it does is wholesale: it refinances banks, funds state infrastructure and passes government subsidy through to the banks that lend.

That matters if you are a founder, because it decides which door you knock on. NABARD's own site is clear about the pattern. On the government schemes it runs it calls itself a channel partner and says the subsidy it receives from the concerned ministry is passed on to the financing banks. Its incubation money goes to the institutions that host incubators. Its fund money goes to fund managers. Only one route on the whole site takes an approach from a startup.

What you can apply to directly

That route is the AgriSURE Direct Scheme. AgriSURE is a fund set up by the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare and NABARD and registered with SEBI as a Category-II Alternative Investment Fund. NABVENTURES Ltd, a company NABARD owns outright and incorporated in April 2018, manages it. The Direct Scheme buys equity, compulsorily convertible preference shares or similar instruments in startups, and it states one hard gate: it invests only in startups recognised by DPIIT and incorporated in India. The fund's own public notice says you can contact NABVENTURES about it yourself, that nothing is charged for applying, and that anyone offering to get you funding for a fee is not acting for the fund.

NABARD also runs RuralTech CoLab, an empanelment platform for technology partners. It is open in three areas: geospatial intelligence and drone-based project monitoring, traceability as a service, and digital enablers for farmer producer organisations. It is a partnering route rather than a funding one, and NABARD publishes no eligibility criteria for it; the portal behind the link needs an account.

What reaches you only through someone else

Rural Business Incubation Centres are the biggest of these. NABARD gives grant assistance to eligible institutions to set up a centre; the centre then incubates startups in agriculture, allied activities and non-farm work. Nine were operational at 31 March 2025, hosted by Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, IIT Kharagpur, RVSKVV Gwalior, ICAR-NAARM, PJTSAU, Sardarkrushinagar Dantiwada Agricultural University, Rajiv Gandhi University in Arunachal Pradesh, SKUAST-Kashmir and Kerala Agricultural University. You apply to one of those centres on its own terms. NABARD publishes no application route, no intake and no eligibility test for founders.

The NABARD Rural Startup Catalytic Capital scheme is the same shape and says so in one sentence: it provides assistance to startups through incubation centres or NABARD subsidiaries. It is meant to bridge the gap between developing a technology and commercialising it. Fifteen startups were supported in 2024-25. There is no form and no window; the incubator you are already in is the door.

The Alternative Investment Fund window is often read as a startup route and is not one. The applicant is the investment manager of a fund. The fund has to be registered under the SEBI Alternative Investment Fund Regulations, 2012, in Category I or II, with a life of at most ten years, and NABARD requires twice its own commitment to be invested in enterprises working for agriculture and rural development. A startup reaches this money only by raising from a fund NABARD has backed. The AgriSURE Fund-of-Funds scheme works the same way.

The Agri Clinic and Agri Business Centres scheme is a real opening for an agriculture graduate, but it belongs to the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare; NABARD is the subsidy channelling agency. You qualify on your qualification, not your company: agriculture and allied-subject graduates from state or central agricultural universities or ICAR- and UGC-recognised universities, diploma and post-graduate diploma holders with at least 50 per cent marks, biological science graduates with a post-graduation in agriculture, and holders of agriculture-related courses at intermediate level with at least 55 per cent marks. The scheme covers training and handholding, a loan, and a credit-linked back-end subsidy. You go to a bank with the loan application form NABARD publishes, and the subsidy reaches the bank.

Everything the Rural MSME Department runs works through implementing agencies rather than founders. Micro Enterprise Development Programmes, the Livelihood and Enterprise Development Programme and the skilling programmes pay a project implementing agency to train people; a startup can be that agency, but it is not the beneficiary. Rural Enterprise Producer Organisations, rural haats, rural marts, stalls in malls, geographical indication registrations and Gram Vihar rural homestays all support collectives, artisans and local agencies. The Producers Organisation Development Fund reaches farmer producer organisations through promoting institutions and lending banks. The Research and Development Fund pays for studies, seminars, chair units and training, not ventures.

Where NABARD's money has reached startups

The nine incubation centres report having incubated over 1,500 incubatees and graduated 471 startups by 31 March 2025 — their number, not NABARD's own intake. Under the AgriSURE Direct Scheme, NABVENTURES lists Fambo, Elmed Probiotics, Aquapulse and KisaanSay. NABVENTURES Fund I, a separate fund, lists Jai Kisan, Eggoz, Unnati, Navadhan, Tan90 Thermal Solutions and others.

Sectors and where to ask

AgriSURE names the ground it covers: agritech, food processing, animal husbandry, fisheries, supply chain, farm mechanisation, biotechnology, waste management, renewable energy, the agri value chain, support for farmer producer organisations, farm-level technology and climate change. For the fund, write to NABVENTURES. For incubation and rural enterprise work, the Rural MSME Department in Mumbai is the department that owns it. For a government scheme, start at your bank. NABARD's site lists careers under Career Notices and events under its media room, and the English pages sit behind a language chooser on the home page.