Agritech startup DeHaat has raised $30 million (₹219 crore) in Series C funding round led by Prosus Ventures.

RTP Global and existing investors Sequoia Capital India, FMO, Omnivore and AgFunder also participated in the round.

DeHaat’s online platform provides full-stack agricultural services to farmers and has till date raised $46 million (₹336 crore).

Advisory and networking

The Patna and Gurugram-based startup was founded by Shashank Kumar and Manish Kumar, both alumni of IITs. DeHaat’s platform provides farmers with agricultural inputs, a network of potential bulk buyers and retailers and AI-based customized crop advisory content of pest and diseases.

It manages delivery through its app and a network of call centers in rural areas. The startup offers more than 4,000 agricultural inputs and supplies to over 500 buyers including retail chains, ecommerce players, FMCG giants and SME food processors.

Some of its leading buyers include B2B marketplace Udaan, Reliance Fresh and food delivery platform Zomato.

Unique solution for Indian farmers

Speaking on the development, Galina Chifina, Partner, RTP Global said, “We have been watching DeHaat for 18 months and have been impressed with the speed of development that the team is demonstrating.”

“Agritech is exploding in India and DeHaat is building a unique infrastructure platform and is one of the only companies delivering an end-to-end solution for the farming community in India. We’re excited to be on-board and lend our support.”

With the fresh capital DeHaat aims to aggregate 10 million (1 crore) onto its network and help them increase their profitability.

DeHaat has grown 3.5X annually over the past two years and crated a network of 1,300 DeHaat microentrepreneurs for last mile delivery. It serves more than 3,60,000 farmers located across Jharkhand, Bihar, UP and Odisha.

Also read: Agritech startup Gramophone raises $3.4 million from Siana Capital

Agritech startup CropIn Technology has raised $20 million (₹146 crore) in Series C round led by ABC World Asia.

New investors CDC Group and Pratithi Investment Trust (Kris Gopalakrishnan’s family office) participated in the round, along with existing investors Chiratae Ventures, Invested Development and Ankur Capital.

CropIn uses Artificial Intelligence and data-driven machine-learning analytics to help farmers with agronomy management and predictive farming.

It has two basic platforms – SmartRisk for ML-based farm analytics and SmartFarm for streamlining crop value-chains and improving efficiency.

The startup has till now raised a total fund of $33.1 million (₹242 crore). Its backers include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Based in Bengaluru, CropIn was founded in 2010 by Krishna Kumar and Kunal Prasad. It has tried to support farms of different sizes to improve yields, optimize production and improve resilience and sustainability with the help of AI, data analytics and IoT systems.

CropIn claims its data-driven farming solutions enable agri-enterprises to maximize their per acre value. Till date, it has supported 4 million (40 lakh) farmers, on a total area of 13 million (1.3 crore) acres of farming land.

In February, CropIn collaborated with the government of India for the Crop Cutting Experiment (CCE) process. It was for accurately estimating the yield of a crop in a region during a cultivation cycle.

Krishna Kumar, Founder and CEO of CropIn, said, “The robust, predictive power of digitalization offers tremendous potential for the agriculture industry to leapfrog its many challenges in the coming years.”

CropIn will use the fresh capital to improve its AI capabilities and expand its global operations. It has already opened an office in Amsterdam, where a local team will be hired to grow in the European market.

Also read: Agritech startup Aqgromalin raises funds from angel investors

Otipy, the social e-commerce platform for fresh produce has stated that it is in active discussions to raise $10 million (₹72.9 crore) this year.

This fund will be used to empower more resellers and expand its business across India.

Otipy is part of the larger platform Crofarm, which was founded by Varun Khurana and Rohit Arora in 2016. It delivered farm produce directly to the retailers till June 2020, when it launched Otipy, a B2B2C e-commerce platform for the general consumer.

Otipy has already raised $2 million (₹14.5 crore) from Inflection Point Ventures and the Smile Group.

“We have a history and deep understanding of fresh produce that we have leveraged to build a social commerce model that creates earning opportunities for women and stores, helps farmers, and provides fresher, more nutritious produce to consumers at a lesser price,” Otipy co-founder Varun Khurana said.

In the last 8-9 months, their platform has supported over 2,500 women and stores as resellers in Delhi and NCR region. They are planning to expand to other cities of the country as well. Resellers/leaders earn a commission of 10% on the items sold, which the company claims be the highest among the social commerce brands in India

Currently the startup is processing over 5,000 daily orders from 1,00,000 consumers in NCR. It will launch other farm products on its platform, which has already included dairy and grocery products.

Also read : Agritech startup Arya raises $21 million to expand warehouse facilities for farmers