Sequoia leads $12 mn Series A funding in agritech platform DeHaat

Green Agrevolution, which owns and operates agritech platform DeHaat, has raised $12 million in Series A round of funding, led by venture capital firm Sequoia India. 

The Hague-based entrepreneurial development bank FMO participated in the round, along with returning investors including venture capital firms Omnivore and AgFunder, the company said in a statement.

Founded in 2012 by IIT alumni Shashank Kumar and Manish Kumar, along with NIT Jamshedpur alumnus Amrendra Singh, DeHaat is a technology-based platform that provides full-stack agricultural services to farmers, including agricultural inputs, customised farm advisory, access to financial services and market linkages to sell their produce.

The Gurugram headquartered company also aggregates produce from farmers and supplies it to over 200 commodity bulk buyers, such as retail chains, ecommerce firms and fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies.

It will use the fresh capital to scale up to 2,000 rural retail centres for last-mile delivery and farm produce aggregation, and add a million farmers to its network by next year, the company said. It will also use the funds to automate its supply chain and build the next layer of data analytics to make it more efficient, it added.

“Sequoia’s deep expertise in business-to-business platforms and technology products combined with FMO’s expertise in agricultural value chain financing will help DeHaat accelerate its growth, while delivering massive impact for the farmers we work with,” co-founder Kumar, also the CEO of the company, said. 

In March, the company raised $4 million (Rs 29 crore then) in a seed funding round, led by Omnivore and AgFunder. In May, it raised $3 million (Rs 20 crore then) from venture debt firm Trifecta Capital.

DeHaat claims that its annual revenue has grown 3.5 times since March. It currently serves over 2,10,000 farmers across Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Odisha.

Dexter Capital acted as the exclusive advisor of this funding round, the statement added.

“Indian agriculture industry is over $350 billion in total and is powered by close to 100 million small and independent farmers. This industry is on the brink of a massive transformation with ease of regulation, farmers getting organised and increasing smartphone penetration. DeHaat is leveraging these trends to build the next-gen product in the agricultural supply chain,” Abhishek Mohan, vice president, Sequoia Capital India, said.

In May, DeHaat acquired VezaMart, a platform that builds farm management solutions for farmers.

In July 2015, Kaktag Agrotech had acquired a 6.07 % stake in Green Agrevolution, the parent entity of DeHaat, according to research platform VCCEdge.

The agritech space has witnessed multiple deals this year.

Earlier this month, Ergos Business Solutions, which runs an eponymous agri-tech startup, raised $5 million in a Series A round led by returning investor Aavishkaar Capital, the impact investment arm of the Aavishkaar Group

Last month, New Delhi-based Arya Collateral Warehousing Services, which provides post-harvest supply chain services, raised $6 million in an extended Series A round from impact investor Omnivore and returning investor LGT Lightstone Aspada.

In February, impact investor Omnivore Capital Management Advisors and venture capital firm Accel India Management co-led a $5.5 million Series A funding round in business-to-business (B2B) agritech startup Clover Ventures.

In January, Gurugram-based Kisan Network raised $3 million as part of its seed funding round led by Mistletoe managing director Atsushi Taira.