Patna-based agritech startup DeHaat has raised ₹90 crores in its Series A funding round from venture capital firm Sequoia Capital India and Dutch development bank FMO. AgFunder and Omnivore, the existing investors, also participated in the funding round. Investment bank Dexter Capital acted as the financial advisor to the startup.
The startup plans to use the freshly raised capital to expand its reach to more than 10 lakh farmers by the end of 2021. It wants to build a network of more than 2,000 rural retail centres for last-mile delivery as well as farm produce aggregation. Furthermore, a part of the capital will be used to automate the supply chain and build the next layer of data analytics to make the supply chain meaningful.
Earlier in May 2019, the startup raised ₹20 crores from venture debt firm Trifecta Capital Advisors. Before that in March 2019, DeHaat raised ₹30 crores from venture capital firm Omnivore.
Founded by Shashank Kumar in 2012, DeHaat is also known as Green Agrevolution. It is an online platform that offers end-to-end agricultural services to farmers including distribution of high-quality agricultural inputs, AI-based customized farm advisory, financial assistance and market linkages to farmers for selling their produce more efficiently.
The startup is working with more than 2 lakh farmers across states like Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh.
DeHaat provides farmers and farm owners with advisory services on disease management for their crops as well as pest control methods on the mobile application. The startup has opened dedicated call centres to resolve the doubts of farmers. The platform connects farmers to different micro-businesses.
For the financial year 2020, the startup recorded ₹135 crores in revenue which is 3.5 times more than ₹43 crores which it earned in the financial year 2019. The startup aims to achieve ₹1,200 crores in revenue by the financial year 2022.
Some of the notable startups in the agritech sector include NinjaKart, Bijak, Fasal, Ergos, WayCool, and Aquaconnect. Bengaluru-based Ergos recently raised ₹35 crores in Series A funding round from Aavishkaar Capital. way cool also raised ₹245 crores from multiple investors including InnoVen, Lightbox, and FMO Entrepreneurial Development Bank. Bijak has also raised ₹17 crores from Omnivore and Omidyar Network India in December last year.
