INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
DeHaat, an online platform that offers full-stack agricultural services to farmers, has raised $12 million as it looks to scale its network
across India.The Series A financial round for the eight-year-old Patna and Gurgaon-based startup was led by Sequoia Capital India
Dutch entrepreneurial development bank FMO, and existing investors Omnivore and AgFunder, also participated in the round
The startup, which began to seek funding from external investors last year, has raised $16 million to date and $3 million in venture
debt.DeHaat (which means village in Hindi) eases the burden on farmers by bringing together brands, institutional financers and buyers on
one platform, explained Shashank Kumar, co-founder and chief executive of the startup, in an interview with A Technology News Room.The
platform helps farmers secure thousands of agri-input products, including seeds and fertilizers, and receive tailored advisory on the crop
they should sow in a season
connect with 200 institutional partners to provide farmers with working capital, and when the season is over, helps them sell their yields
to bulk buyers such as Reliance Fresh, food delivery startup Zomato and business-to-business e-commerce giant Udaan.DeHaat today operates
farmers, said Kumar.Shashank Kumar, Amrendra Singh, Adarsh Srivastav and Shyam Sundar Singh co-founded DeHaat in 2012The startup has
developed a network of hundreds of micro-entrepreneurs in rural areas that distribute agri-input goods to farmers from their regional hubs
takes a cut whenever farmers use its platform to buy agri-inputs or sell their crop yields.The startup will use the fresh capital to extend
its network to 2,000 rural retail centres, on-board more micro-entrepreneurs for last-mile delivery and reach 1 million farmers by June of
agriculture market that is worth $350 billion and serves nearly 100 million small and independent farmers, said Abhishek Mohan, VP at
transformation thanks to ease of regulation, farmers getting organized and increasing penetration of smartphones
associated with a platform they felt truly worked in their favour
