In yet another investment in recent days, agritech has turned out to be the winner. A digital marketplace for farm services and products – DeHaat – has bagged a Rs 30 crore worth round with Omnivore Ventures as the lead investor.
A Us based VC firm that focuses solely on investing in agriculture segment, AgFunder has also participated in the round, along with several Angel investors.
Shashank Kumar, an IIT-D alumnus, found the startup to provide end-to-end services like high-quality segment specific inputs, customised advising, financial services, and market linkages to farmers for the sale of their produce.
The startup currently serves about 56,000 small farmers (with land less than 2 hectares) in the UP, Bihar, and Odisha belt, which it believes to be the most fertile belt plagued with worst connectivity.
With the fresh funding, the company wants to increase this number to 2.5 lakhs in next one year. To facilitate this widespread reach, there is also a plan to set up 14 regional warehouses to store inventory. This inventory would be from the supply side, and not owned by the startup itself. The regions that will be a part of this expansion include Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Maharashtra.
It also plans on adding on more agri services to its platform to become a one-stop solution for all farm-related problems. The new products will include farm credit and crop insurance.
In the current fiscal ending in a few days, the company expects a 2X jump in its revenue to Rs 45 crore from Rs 21 crore in FY18.
As per a Mint report, this is the first institutional round raised by the company. In 2014, it had raised Rs 50 lakhs from angel investors, and two years later another Rs 50 lakhs from IIM Calcutta Innovation Center.
In recent days several agritech startups have been successfully raising funds across the country. Sachin Bansal has started his own firm with $7 million to acquire agritech and fintech startups. The decently funded agritech startup similar to DeHaat, AgroStar raised a $27 million round led by Bertelsmann. Agritech robotics startup TartanSense also closed a $2 million seed round in the past week.
