Who We Are
Aegipan Animal Biocare Private Limited (or, Aegipan®) is a pioneering company in successful large-scale application of Artificial Insemination (AI) in goats in India. Preservation of good germplasm of indigenous goat breeds has direct connection with farmer income improvement and rural employment generation. Our story is a testimony of this fact.
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Black Bengal breed is known for its excellent meat quality and glossy skin; and there is very high demand for its meat. However, male goat sacrificing in religious rituals and the practice of castration at an earlier age to get higher growth rate as well as to avoid goaty odour in the meat, result in non-availability of sufficient numbers of breeding males in villages. Goat farmers are not able to get the females bred at right time which ultimately leads to poor conception rate or decline in goat population growth. Continuous use of same breeding males and its progenies over a longer period in the same locality leads to inbreeding depression and thus fall in quality of goat.
Kalyan Koley, Founder & CEO, started research on this subject and introduced AI in goats in a lab to land approach. This actually kicked off a cascading effect in rural Bengal where not only inbreeding problem was addressed but weight gain upto 60% was observed. In addition, it increased farmer income by 40%-50% and generated sustainable livelihoods for AI workers and veterinary service partners (for vaccination) who were basically earlier unemployed village youths.
Today, we have a strong network of more than 250000 goat farmers and 3500 village youths spanning across 35 districts of Eastern India. We buyback AI-produced goats from farmer’s doorstep at an appropriate age and deal with the meat business without involvement of middlemen. This hassle-free trading has further enhanced our reputation to make us a household name amongst goat reaers who are mostly poor and marginalized women in rural hinterlands.
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We are marching strongly to replicate the model with different breeds of goats and to scale our operations in different parts of the country. We are optimistic that this will not only address the issue of shrinking male goat population (~15% decrease from 2012 to 2019 - livestock census), but also provide hygienic meat at an optimal price to end-consumers.