Samunnati Acquires Agri Supply Chain Startup Kamatan

Chennai-based Samunnati Financial Intermediation & Services Pvt Ltd has acquired agri-supply chain platform Kamatan in an all-stock deal to position itself as an end-to-end agri-solutions service provider. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Through the acquisition, Sammunnati is expected to benefit from the last-mile benefits of digitalisation to farmer producer organisations (FPOs) and help Samunnati to expand its footprint in the central and northern parts of India, where Kamatan has a strong base with over 50 farmer producer organisations.

The transaction extends Samunnati’s investment in the startup. In 2019, Kamatan Farm Tech announced an INR 30 Cr equity and debt funding round from Samunnati. More recently, Kamatan recently raised around INR 17.5 Cr from global investors.

“Kamatan has built supply chains for all farm produce, leveraging technology to reduce wastage and inefficiencies, while linking producers and bulk buyers. With the acquisition, Samunnati is expected to expand its outreach to new farmer producer organisations (FPOs), small traders, farmer aggregators, and agri SMEs in India,” Anilkumar SG, CEO and founder of Samunnati, told ET.

The acquisition is expected to expand Samunnati’s reach among small traders, farm aggregators, and agricultural SMEs. As part of the deal, all 45 employees of Kamatan including its cofounder and CEO Pravesh Sharma will join Samunnati.

Kamatan was founded by Pravesh Sharma, Rohan Patnaik, Raghunandan B and Amol Patil in 2018 as an agriculture supply company to manage logistics and supply chain by building agri chain solutions for small farmers. 

The company was the result of a merger between two agritech companies Sabziwala and LivLush, which featured common investors. It currently works with 70 FPOs and claims to have supported over 30K farmers across 20 cities. Its clients include agri enterprises, food processors, hotels, restaurants and cafe chains, grocery startups and retailers with Taj Hotels, ITC, FreshMenu, Swiggy, BigBasket, Grofers and Chai Point among others already on board.

Samunnati was founded in 2014 to focus on agriculture financing and includes Elevar, Accel, ResponsAbility and Nuveen among its investors. The company specialises in market linkages through its agri chain platform, while also focussing on upskilling small farmers and traders in the end to end supply chain it serves. The firm raised equity capital of $55 Mn in May 2019 in a Series D funding round, from US-based Nuveen.

According to Inc42 Plus data, the addressable agritech market potential of India is expected to touch $24.1 Bn by 2025, out of which India’s agritech startups have tapped just $204 Mn in 2020, which is less than 1%. Further, in terms of funding, the agritech space has received $467 Mn, from 2014 to H1 2020 combined.

In particular, market linkage agritech startups in India are seeing massive investor interest. This segment bagged $305.2 Mn investment between 2014 and H1 2020, out of the total funding of $467 Mn and is expected to reach a market value of $12 Bn by 2025. Some of the notable startups in this category include WayCool, Origo Commodities, Ninjakart, Crofarm and Agrostar among others.

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