Exclusive: Vegrow to raise $12 Mn led by Lightspeed at $50 Mn valuation

Fresh farm produce supply chain startup Vegrow is in late-stage talks to raise a round from new and existing investors, three people aware of the details of the deal said. This would be the second financing round for the year-old firm.

“Lightspeed has been in conversation to lead a $12-15 million funding round in Vegrow for the past six-eight weeks,” said one of the people on condition of anonymity. “The terms are almost finalised and existing investors Matrix Partners, Ankur Capital and Better Capital are also participating in it.”

Founded in 2020 by Praneeth Kumar, Shobhit Jain, Mrudhukar Batchu, and Kiran Naik, Vegrow provides advisory, packaging and logistics to farmers in Karnataka. According to sources, the company is still figuring out the right model and as of now, it has been supplying vegetables and fruits to mandis and select partners.

“Vegrow is likely to be valued in the range of $40-50 million,” said the second person who also wished not to be named as the discussion is private.

Entrackr queries sent to Lightspeed and Vegrow didn’t elicit any immediate response. We will update the story in case they do.

Last July, Vegrow had raised $2.5 million in a seed round led by Matrix. Titan Capital along with several angels including Sanjiv Rangrass, Rohit MA, Ramakant Sharma and Amit Lakhotia also participated in the round.

Vegrow is the latest company to take a shot at B2B fresh fruits and vegetable supply chain with addressable market size of $43 billion. Ninjacart and Waycool are the two largest companies in the space. Ninjacart has the backing of Walmart, Tiger Global and ABG Capital and Waycool has raised close to $80 million across several institutional rounds.

It’s worth noting that Crofarm was also functional in farm to retail space until early last year. It had pivoted to become a consumer-facing platform for fresh produce with a hint of social commerce in the second half of 2020.