Exclusive: Bijak scores $12 Mn in Series A; valuation jumps over 7X

Agritech startup Bijak has scored $12 million in its Series A funding round from over half a dozen investors including existing investors Sequoia-owned Surge Ventures and Omidyar Network.

Six months ago, the two venture capitalists had led a $2.5 million seed round in the Gurugram-based startup. Launched a year ago, Bijak was among 20 startups picked up by Sequoia Capital in the second cohort of its accelerator program ‘Surge 2.0’.

The new investors who participated in the round are AL Trust, RU Net, and Tempo Ventures. RU Net led the round, investing Rs 38.08 crore followed by existing backers Omidyar and Surge who pumped in Rs 17.51 crore and Rs 15.24 crore respectively. 

Omnivore Partners, AL Trust, and Tempo Ventures also joined the round with respective investments of Rs 17.51 crore, Rs 1.43 crore and Rs 98.1 lakh.

Bijak has approved the allotment of 2591 Series A CCPS at an issue price of  Rs 3,50,324 each to raise Rs 90.76 crore from the investors, as per the company’s fresh regulatory filings. 

According to Entrackr’s calculation, the valuation of the company saw a 7.6X jump from Rs 80 crore in its seed round to Rs 613 crore or $82 million in the current round. Following the investment, the promoters have diluted 10.51% of their holding in this round and now control 57.12% of the stake.

Right before the allotment of Series A shares, the company converted 36 lakh convertible debentures held by Omnivore partners into 128 Seed CCPS. Moreover, during the last round, the shares allotted to investors including AL Trust Ashish Agarwal and Nipun Mehra ( ex-VP Sequoia India) at a price of Rs 48,517 per share, which has now grown 7.2 x in less than a month.

Launched a year ago, Bijak is the brainchild of  Nukul Upadhye, Mahesh Jakhotia, Jitender Bedwal, Daya Rai and Nikhil Tripathi. With its presence in over 22 states including Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Bihar and Uttarakhand, Bijak covers 550 regions across the country and deals in more than 80 commodities.

A B2B trade platform for the agricultural sector, Bijak enables traders, wholesalers and food processors to keep a ledger of their transactions, access transparent pricing, optimize logistics and improve their working capital cycles.