D2C startup for farm produce Deep Rooted raises $12.5 Mn

Farm to fork startup Deep Rooted has raised $12.5 million in Series A funding round led by IvyCap Ventures while existing investors Accel, Omnivore, and Mayfield also participated in its maiden round in 2022.

The funding will enable Deep Rooted to expand its operations to major cities in Southern India, improve technology capabilities and hire across departments, said the Bengaluru-based company in a press statement.

Started as a B2B business, Deep Rooted used to manage 100 acres of greenhouses and supply vegetables and fruits to over 120 restaurants in Bengaluru. However, the company changed its track as the pandemic had hit its core business severely. Over the past year, it’s solely focused on delivering to customers directly in Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai.

Deep Rooted raised a $5.5 million Series A round for its B2B2 business in 2020 and used this proceeds to grow its consumer business.  While the company used to compete with walmart-backed Ninjacart in its B2B business, it now (with B2C platform) competes with Otipy, Country Delight and Fraazo among others. Mumbai-based Fraazo has been struggling and currently looking for merger and acquisition opportunities with Swiggy and Flipkart.

Agritech startups have been thriving in the past two and a half years and this could be evident from Entrackr’s Agritech Report which showed that nearly 100 startups in the space raised close to $1.33 billion across 139 deals between January 2020 and June 2022. In the past three months,Vegrow, Veg Route, Produze, and Loopworm also joined the list.