Vol. 11, Special Issue 9 (2022)

Author(s):
Sangeetha R and Venkata Pirabu J

Abstract:
Agripreneurship has the potential to contribute to the economic and social development of the country. Agripreneurs are business stakeholders engaged with agriculture and allied sectors. They help to transform Indian agriculture into a profitable venture by promoting value addition. On the flipside, the survival of agripreneurs has been often confronted with various hurdles. The COVID-19 pandemic is one such crisis that caused a devastating challenge to the business cycle of agripreneurs. The lockdown and other safety measures extremely altered the existing business model and hence becoming resilient is the only possible way to sustain the business for agripreneurs. Henceforth, a study was conducted to know the socio-economic characteristics of resilient agripreneurs. A sample of 234 agripreneurs was selected using a proportionate sampling technique from the highest four agripreneurship prevailing districts of Tamil Nadu viz., Cuddalore, Coimbatore, Madurai and Salem. The data was collected using a pre-tested and well structured interview schedule. Totally, 17 socio-economic characteristics were analysed and the results revealed that the majority of the agripreneurs were middle aged (51.28%), undergraduates (45.29%), sole proprietors (73.93%), having 11 to 20 years of business experience (49.15%), had undergone up to 5 trainings (39.31%) and belonged to a nuclear family type (55.13%). The agripreneurs possessed medium level of self confidence (71.37%), information seeking behaviour (76.50%), innovativeness (61.53%), achievement motivation (56.42%), economic motivation (82.05%), competition orientation (64.53%), decision making ability (64.53%), leadership ability (61.97%), managerial ability (47.00%) and risk taking ability (62.39%). The socio-economic characteristics of agripreneurs might have transformed them to be resilient during the pandemic.