Clover Bags $5.5 Mn Series A To Enter New Cities

Bengaluru-based agritech platform Clover, on Thursday (February 13), announced that it has raised $5.5 Mn in Series A funding round from venture capital companies — Omnivore, Accel Partners, and Mayfield. In December 2018, Accel and Mayfield had invested in Clover’s seed funding round.

With the recently raised funds, the company will invest in accelerating its growth in managing farm network and diversify its fresh produce offerings. Moreover, Clover is also planning to expand operations to more cities in India.

Founded by Avinash BR, Gururaj Rao, Arvind Murali, and Santhosh Narasipura, Clover grows fruits and vegetables in greenhouse farms. As the demand for these products is more in urban areas, Clover has set up these farms in semi-urban and urban areas to ensure freshness and reduce spoilage.

After the growth of fruits and vegetables, the startup then sells this fresh produce through both B2B and B2C channels. In this way, Clover is aiming to transform the perishable vegetable and fruit supply chain to better serve individuals living in metro cities.

The startup claims to be offering a full-stack agricultural solution to farmers working in the greenhouse production of vegetables and fruits. The company claims that the solution provided by it helps startup to improve yields and standardising their product quality.

Mayfield’s managing partner Vikram Godse said that Clover’s technology, systems, and processes bring not only economic benefits to its customers but also help them to get access to improved quality of the produce.

According to DataLabs by Inc42, agritech startups in India raised around $66.6 Mn (INR 463 Cr) in 2018. The same report also highlighted that the total funding in the agritech space was $46.1 Mn (INR 320 Cr) in 2017. Some of the companies in the agritech sector include Bijak, Ninjacart, Vegfru, Lemon Leaf, DayBox, Crofarm, WayCool CropIn, Fasal and Kamatan Farm tech.

In December 2019, Omnivore has also participated in $2.5 Mn seed funding round of Bijak. Omidyar Network India and Sequoia Capital India’s accelerator programme Surge had also participated in the funding round.

Recently, Ninjacart had entered into a partnership with Walmart and Flipkart. Ninjacart works in the supply chain startup working in India’s fresh produce industry to connect farmers with retailers and businesses in the hotels, restaurants and cafes (HoReCa) industry.