Jharkhand Agriculture Minister Shilpi Neha Tirkey with member of Jharkhand Women FPO in Ranchi
Bangalore-based Social Alpha, an innovation curation and venture development platform, and Sustain Plus, in collaboration with multiple stakeholders, have announced a plan to strengthen the agricultural value chain in Jharkhand, impacting around 100,000 small and marginal farmers.
Over the next four years, Social Alpha and Sustain Plus will work to strengthen agricultural value chains from pre-production to post-harvest, directly empowering 40,000 women in 20 Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs) across 20 blocks of Jharkhand, who will lead implementation on the ground.
This effort will be implemented under the Sustain Plus-PRADAN partnership, with PRADAN (Professional Assistance for Development Action), a development organization working to improve living conditions in rural and tribal communities through women-led collectives, leading mobilization and capacity building on the ground. The partnership is built on stabilizing production and enabling households to move up the value chain. This will serve as a basis for scaling up similar models in districts across central India, in collaboration with civil society organizations, technology providers and government departments.
The plan was announced at the innovation and technology showcase event held in Ranchi on October 16, 2025. The event brought together government leaders, innovators, CSR partners and community representatives to explore how community-based technologies can drive inclusive rural development in Jharkhand.
Shilpi Neha Tirkey, Minister, Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Husbandry and Cooperative, Government of Jharkhand, graced the event as the chief guest and launched the Sustain Plus-PRADAN partnership.
“Our farmers cannot be just a limited agricultural sector, they must also be involved in other agricultural and related activities. To create better solutions, we must first understand the problems on the ground and ensure that these solutions reach our villages through organizations like yours. It is encouraging to see organizations like Social Alpha and Sustain Plus reaching unreached and underserved regions and bridging the gap between communities and technology. We must work together to integrate these innovations into government schemes so that their benefits reach every farmer in Jharkhand,” Tirkey said.
Social Alpha’s full-stack architecture brings ideas from Lab to Communities. The event showcased fourteen start-ups developing solutions in clean energy, agricultural technology and livelihood improvement.
Living laboratory
Ganesh Neelam, co-founder of Social Alpha, said, “Jharkhand has become a living laboratory for testing and scaling high-impact technologies. Through partnerships with the communities, government stakeholders and other civil society organizations, we aim to bring our complete ‘lab to communities’ approach to create a positive impact for people and the planet. Creating large-scale impact through Strengthening communities through technology adoption is what drives Social Alpha and Sustain. Plus.”
Over the past five years, Social Alpha and Sustain Plus have been integrating decentralized renewable energy (DRE) into rural livelihood systems in thirteen districts of Jharkhand. More than 4,300 clean energy systems have been deployed in 900 villages, directly benefiting more than 16,000 agricultural households through the Production Hub approach. These interventions have enabled irrigation expansion over 7,600 hectares, including 4,700 hectares of new cultivable land, mainly through solar irrigation and other DRE-driven livelihood solutions. Nearly two-thirds of these systems are individually owned, reflecting strong local adoption and sustainability.
The program has also collaborated with the Jharkhand Milk Federation, through the strategic partnership National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) – Sustain Plus and others, and deployed 125 units and a manure processing system. The company is further working to strengthen the dairy value chain, which is expected to impact over 10,000 dairy farmers in the state.
Published on October 17, 2025
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