Agritech Platform DeHaat raises $115 Million in Series D funding from Sofina and Lightrock India
Digital Edge Bureau 30 Oct, 2021 0 comment(s)Gurgaon-based DeHaat (having its head office in Patna, Bihar), a firm offering end-to-end agritech services to farmers in India, has succeeded in raising $115 Million in Series D funding, led by Belgium-based investment firm Sofina and Lightrock India. Temasek co-invested in the round, with participation from existing investors Prosus, RTP Global, Sequoia Capital India and FMO. Dexter Capital and Vertices Partners were the advisors of this funding round.
Founded in 2012 by IIT, IIM & NIT alumni Amrendra Singh, Shyam Sundar, Adarsh Srivastav & Shashank Kumar, DeHaat is a technology-based business to farmers (B2F) platform that offers full-stack agricultural services to farmers, including distribution of high-quality agricultural inputs, customised farm advisory, access to financial services, and market linkages for selling their produce.
“We, at DeHaat, are on a mission of building the world’s largest agritech platform. We’ve raised $157 Million from marquee investors in the last 30 months and our team has grown to a brigade of 850-plus professionals with deep expertise of growth, strategy, supply chain, technology and agricultural science. Last seven months have been phenomenal with 5x growth for DeHaat. Hence, we’re now well poised to replicate the success in all major agriculture clusters of India in next 12-15 months”, said Shashank Kumar, Co-Founder & CEO, DeHaat.
Yana Kachurina, Principal, Sofina, viewed, “Through our due diligence, we became convinced that DeHaat is bringing substantial value-add to the farming community in India. The uniqueness of its full-stack approach combined with the phygital go-to-market strategy further reaffirmed our view that the company is on track to become a significant player in the farming industry in India.”
Vaidhehi Ravindran, Partner at Lightrock India, said, “We’ve been following DeHaat’s progress through the years and are impressed with their steep growth trajectory combined with a strong network of micro-entrepreneurs. Through innovative social engineering and tech-led execution, DeHaat has built the largest first mile network for farmers and is well positioned to help transform agriculture by improving yields and farmer income.”
DeHaat has currently built a rural retail network of more than 3,000 DeHaat micro-entrepreneurs for effecting the last-mile delivery as well as aggregation. It serves more than 6,50,000 farmers located across Bihar, UP, Jharkhand and Odisha. DeHaat has now started expanding to new geographies like Madhya Pradesh (MP) and Rajasthan with a complete 360 degree set of agritech offerings for farmers.