ONO Nets Funding To Boost Supply Chain In Agricultural Produce

Agritech startup ONO has raised INR 11 Cr ($1.3 Mn) as a part of its seed funding round led by Aeravti Ventures, with participation from Indigram Labs.

The startup will use the fresh capital to further its goal of supporting the agricultural supply chain in India’s APMC/MANDI network.

Founded in 2021 by Rama Rao Kancharapu, ONO is a crop price and mandi discovery platform for farmers.

It offers services like price and market discovery platform ONO Connect, credit facilitation platform ONO Cash, SaaS platform for commission agents and traders that provides price and market intelligence, payments, collections and digitisation of market operations ONO Click and mid-mile trading platform ONO Mandi.

The startup claims to be operational in over 45 mandis across six states, with over 30,000 partners. It also claimed to be hosting seven commodity transactions on its platform. 

Kancharapu said, “We have seen an unprecedented acceptance of our products in Mandis and we are confident in our ability to scale our platform and build a sustainable business that creates tangible impact. Having long-term partners, such as Aeravti Ventures and other industry leaders, on board allows us to broaden our horizons and catalyze our growth.”

In 2021, ONO secured $530K in a funding round from a host of angel investors.

It competes against the likes of AgroStar, BigHaat, Cropin, Fasal and Chifu Agritech among others.

“Doubling down on India’s agriculture ecosystem has been a key focus for us. We believe in the transformative power of technology to address systemic challenges, and ONO is well-positioned to disrupt the mandi ecosystem of India,” said Rishabh Singh, managing partner at Aeravti Ventures.

In March last year, Aeravti Ventures marked the first close of its maiden INR 100 Cr fund focussed on emerging tech startups. Back then, the VC firm said that it was planning to invest in startups across sectors like deeptech, biosciences, agritech, climate and enterprisetech.

India’s agritech space has been gaining traction from a lot of investors for quite sometime now. 

For instance, in December last year, business-to-business fruits marketplace Vegrow marked the final close of its Series C funding round in a mix of primary and secondary infusions. The $46 Mn fundraise was led by Singapore-based GIC, along with Prosus Ventures, Matrix Partners India and others.

In the same month, agritech startup Fasal raised Series A funding of INR 100 Cr ($12 Mn) co-led by TDK Ventures and British International Investment (BII).

As per Inc42’s analysis, India’s agritech startups have secured more than $2.4 Bn since 2014.