Decoding Vegrow’s Series B round and captable

Vegrow, a B2B marketplace for fruits and vegetables, had recently announced raising $25 million in a Series B round led by Prosus Ventures. It was probably the second agritech startup after DeHaat to raise funds from Prosus (earlier Naspers).

While Vegrow did not provide much information about the financing round, Fintrackr has decoded important details such as break up of the round, valuation and the company’s shareholding structure through its regulatory filing with the Registrar of Companies (RoC).

The board at Vegrow has passed a special resolution to issue 37,294 Series B compulsory convertible preference shares (CCPS) at an issue price of Rs 50,811 per share to raise Rs 189.5 crore or nearly $24 million.

Prosus has spearheaded the new round with nearly Rs 100 crore while existing investor Matrix Partners put in Rs 30.32 crore. Further, Lightspeed and Elevation Capital invested Rs 21.56 crore each. Ankur Capital and Sanjeev Rangrass also joined the Series B round by infusing Rs 15.16 crore and Rs 21 lakhs respectively.

As per Fintrackr’s estimates, Vegrow has been valued at around $170 million post allotment of Series B shares. The startup has raised $40.5 million to date and was valued at around $50 million during $13 million Series A round in July last year.

Following the fresh allotment, Matrix has become the largest stakeholder in Vegrow with 16% stake whereas co-founders of the company – Shobhit Jain, Praneeth Kumar, Mrudhukar Batchu and Kiran Naik — combinedly hold around 38%. Elevation Capital, Lightspeed, Ankur Capital and Prosus Ventures will hold 10.2%, 10.2%, 9.72% and 7.54% respectively. The complete shareholding structure can be seen below:

Vegrow is a tech platform partnering with farmers, aggregating supply and selling to organized demand through partnership. It simplifies farming and increases land utilization for farmers. According to the company, it is in the business of fruits and vegetables with addressable market size of $43 billion.

During the latest fundraise, Vegrow claims that it engages with farmers across more than 400 production pockets and helps them align with market expectations and get better yield. According to the company, it processes more than 200 tons of fruits daily and operates in Karnataka and Telangana. Its competition includes Dailyninja, Waycool and Zomato’s HyperPure.

Vegrow also said that it has grown 15-fold in the last 12 months with industry leading gross margins of 20%. However, it did not provide the latest revenue numbers. During FY21, Vegrow recorded a revenue of Rs 11.8 crore with a loss of Rs 4.8 crore.

Nearly 100 agritech startups raised close to $1.33 billion across 139 deals between January 2020 and June 2022, according to a report by Entrackr. This includes around 37 deals worth $155 million in 2020, 58 deals worth $636 million in 2021 and 44 deals worth $539 million till June. In July, three more agritech startups including Veg Route and FAARMS joined the list.