Agritech Startup VeGrow Bags $2.5 Mn Seed From Matrix, Ankur Capital

Agritech startup VeGrow has raised $2.5 Mn in seed funding led by Matrix Partners and Ankur Capital to invest in technologies that will improve farming, make the supply chain more efficient and help farmers achieve income stability.

Better Capital, Snapdeal founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal’s Titan Capital, ITC’s agribusiness CEO Sanjiv Rangrass, Cloudnine founder Rohit MA, Livspace founder Ramakant Sharma, and Park+ founder Amit Lakhotia, also participated in the funding round.

VeGrow was founded in April 2020 by Praneeth Kumar, Shobhit Jain, Mrudhukar Batchu and Kiran Naik. The founders all have varying experiences in the Agri sector. While Kumar and Jain had started their careers at ITC’s agribusiness division, Batchu and Naik were directly involved in farming.

The company works with small-hold farmers on a profit-sharing model and aids them across the various stages of the farming cycle using technology. Its primary business is to provide farmers access to high-quality farm inputs, monitor their adherence to best farming practices and enable them to sell their harvest to the right buyers for the right price.

“Our collective experience of working on multiple agri initiatives led us to realise that, with the right set of tech interventions, farming can be a highly remunerative business,” VeGrow’s Kumar added.

Meanwhile, Ritu Verma, cofounder and managing partner at Ankur Capital, said “The team’s depth of understanding the market, coupled with their approach to use technology to drive scale is what we feel sets them apart.”

According to DataLabs by Inc42+, the agritech sector recorded a total funding of $244.59 Mn in 2019, an increase of over 350% in the amount of funding in the agritech sector from the previous year. Meanwhile, DataLabs estimates also show that the total funding in agritech startups in India grew from $46.1 Mn 2017 to $66.6 Mn in 2018.

At the same time, the gross value added by agriculture, forestry and fishing is estimated at $ 265.51 Bn ( INR 18.55 lakh Cr) in FY19.

Other than the big startups in the agriculture space including AgNext, Ninjakart, Dehaat, Samunnati, Farmart, WayCool and others. Fasal had raised seed funding of $1.6 Mn led by Omnivore and Wavemaker Partners in October 2019. The IoT-SaaS platform plans to use the funding to build AI capabilities for each horticulture value chain where the company is focused on.

This year, Noida-headquartered agritech startup Arya has raised $6 Mn in its pre-Series B funding round from Omnivore and LGT Lightstone Aspada to build flexible warehouse products, grow its warehouse receipt financing business, and set up a pan-India agri-warehousing marketplace.