B2B silk marketplace ReshaMandi raises $30 Mn led by Creation Investments

Business-to-business marketplace for silk products, ReshaMandi has scooped up $30 million in its Series A financing round, led by Creation Investments. 

The round saw a mix of equity and debt financing and saw participation from Omnivore, 9 Unicorns, Venture Catalysts, Sandeep Singhal of Nexus, and IndiaMART founder Brijesh Agarwal, among others.

Debt investors include Northern Arc, Alteria Capital, Innoven, and Stride Ventures. 

The company’s co-founder and CEO Mayank Tiwari said that ReshaMandi will use the fresh capital to expand into newer territories and operationalise its research and development work. 

ReshaMandi had raised $1.7 million in a seed financing round in March this year, which was led by Omnivore and Strive Ventures with participation from Axilor Ventures and Supply Chain Labs. 

The company, which offers a full stack digital ecosystem from farm to fashion, said it aimed to expand its business to all major silk-producing states in India. It also wants to establish itself in major weaving clusters like Varanasi, Salem, Kanchipuram, Maheshwar and Dharmavaram. 

The company also aims to extend its retail footprint further into Agra, Kota, Gorakhpur, Ranchi, Bhopal, Indore, Rajkot, Vadodara, Surat, Pune, Nagpur, Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Madurai, Coimbatore, Kochi and Kannur and others over the next three to six months.

Founded in May 2020, ReshaMandi claimed that its revenues grew 30 times in its first year of operations. 

A quick spotlight on agritech startups

Last month, Intello Labs, an artificial intelligence-focused agricultural technology startup, had raised $5 million in a round led by Avaana Capital at an estimated valuation of $34 million. Entrackr had exclusively reported this.

Before that, TartanSense, an AI-powered robotics solutions provider empowering small farm holders, raised $5 million in its Series A round. AgNext also raised a little over $21 million led by Falcon Edge’s Alpha Wave Incubation. Entrackr had exclusively reported on the round. 

Around 30 startups in the agritech space had raised fundings in 2020 and the trend continues in the ongoing calendar year as well in which DeHaat, Vegrow, Waycool and Ninjacart have already kicked off their new rounds. 

As per a recent media report, DeHaat is in talks to raise $100 million in what could be one of the largest funding rounds for an agritech startup in India. Those are very good numbers, considering how controlled India’s agriculture sector is, and the long gestation any agriculture startup needs owing to the nature of the sector.