The round has been led by Saama Capital, GROW and SVG Ventures
Existing investors Omnivore and Nexus Venture Partners also participated in the round
The company said it is growing in India while also pursuing global markets
Gurugram-based agritech startup Intello Labs has raised $5.9 Mn in Series A round of funding led by Saama Capital, alongside global agritech funds GROW (Singapore) and SVG Ventures THRIVE (USA). Existing investors Omnivore and Nexus Venture Partners also participated in the round.
Milan Sharma, cofounder and CEO of Intello Labs said that the funding will help it accelerate growth in international markets, specifically the USA and across Asia Pacific. Prior to this round, the company has raised $2 Mn in funding from investors like Nexus Venture Partners and Omnivore.
Intello Labs was founded in 2016 by Milan Sharma, Nishant Mishra, Himani Shah and Devendra Chandani. The startup had previously raised funds from multiple angel investors and was also a part of two accelerator programmes — Indigram Labs and JioGenNext.
Intello Labs is leveraging artificial intelligence to build a platform for grading and quality monitoring of agricultural commodities. Intello’s AI uses a photo of the commodity sample to generate instantaneous quality metrics.
This image-based solution is accessible through a smartphone application and is aimed at bringing transparency and standardisation to quality assessment along with reducing value risk and wastage in the agriculture supply chains.
The company said it is growing in India while also pursuing global markets, including China, Southeast Asia, and the USA. Some of Intello Labs’ larger clients include Reliance Fresh, Dole, Ocean Spray and many of the leading e-grocery companies in China and Southeast Asia.
Kiranbir Nag, partner, Saama Capital, said, “There is a rapid and growing need for better and faster quality assessment of fresh produce across the value chain to improve the end consumers’ experience and to minimise the already high losses through wastages.”
The company wants to become the de-facto quality platform across agribusiness value chains for trading, procurement, grading, pricing, marketing and traceability. Intello Labs is already working with several global food companies and has developed ready-to-use solutions for fruits, vegetables and spices.
Currently the company is focused on large enterprise clients, but they plan to eventually expand as a SaaS (software-as-a-service) product for small businesses, traders and farmers.
According to DataLabs by Inc42, the agritech sector recorded 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. With farming touted to be a $400 Bn industry in India, the market is big enough for startups in both the organised and unorganised segments to sustain and build scalable models. Some of the leading startups in the industry include AgNext, Gramophone, Fasal, Bijak, DeHaat and others.
