Agritech Platform Falca Raises Funding To Help Farmers Grow Farm Output

Agritech startup Falca has raised more than $3 Mn in a Pre-Series A round led by Inflection Point Ventures. The funding round was a mix of debt and equity funding and saw participation from LetsVenture and Mumbai Angels, along with other HNIs.

The agritech platform aims to use the incoming funding to scale its services, hire talent and build tech infrastructure for the platform.

Founded in 2018 by Santosh Danegoudar, Falca is an agriculture supply chain platform that provides farming solutions to small farmers. The services include machinery on rent, market linkages, storage solutions, advisory and technologies for enhancing farm productivity, among others.

Falca said it helps farmers from soil testing to fertiliser selection for the highest crop yield. The startup’s platform also allows farmers to sell their crops directly to the customer, earning more money by skipping middlemen. Falca allows farmers to list their products on its platform as well.

Further, Falca also provides analytical support such as weather conditions, supply-demand gaps, market prices and suitable harvest times.

According to the startup, it is working with around 100K farmers and offers an ecosystem of more than 65 farm output buyers, over 60 input brands and advisory services supporting more than 40 crops in the country. According to the founder, Falca has enabled transactions worth INR 140 Cr so far.

The agritech startup also has an offline presence with 30 ‘Falca Rural Service Points’, making for a phygital operating model.

Danegoudar, who is also the CEO of Falca, said, “We directly work with farmers and offer them end-to-end farming solutions through a tech-based Phygital platform. Our rural presence and technology platform connects the smallholder farmers with the end markets for quality inputs, marketing produce, renting machinery, farm advisory and storage services.”

Vinay Bansal, founder & CEO, of Inflection Point Ventures, said, “Falca with its extensive research has curated a plethora of services for farmers right from the grass root level to final dispersion of product to the end users. It aims to educate the farmers through its platform and make them well versed with the usage of technology for cultivation and the benefits the Falca has to offer to make a better living and profitable farming business.”

Agritech is fast becoming one of the sunrise sectors in India’s startup ecosystem, in tandem with rapidly modernising agriculture in the country. According to an Inc42 report, India’s agritech market is set to reach $24.1 Bn by 2025, spurred on by the growth within the larger agricultural landscape.

India might also soon witness its first agritech unicorn in DeHaat; we exclusively reported that the agritech soonicorn was in talks to raise $100 Mn at unicorn valuation.