Gramophone Raises $10 Mn Led By Z3Partners Gramophone will use the proceeds towards geographic expansion, marketing, technology development, and M&A
By Prabhjeet Bhatla •
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Gramophone – a full-stack agritech platform on Tuesday announced to have raised a $10 million round led by Z3Partners. Existing investor, Info Edge, has doubled down in this round along with participation from other existing investors, Asha Impact, and Siana Capital. Other new investors in the round include Amit Sharma from erstwhile Sunrise Group, Sumeet Kanwar from Verity, and Chona Family Office (Havmor Group). These family offices bring vast experience in building agri and food businesses.
Gramophone will use the proceeds towards geographic expansion, marketing, technology development and M&A.
"Our mission is to improve the profitability of the farming ecosystem across India. We are building a new age Agriculture Company keeping farmers at the center. We have seen a huge shift in the adoption of technology solutions by the new-age farmers. With this investment, we will double down on investing in technologies that lower costs, improve transparency, and empower the local community of agri entrepreneurs with more earning opportunities in rural areas. We are excited to welcome Z3Partners and other new investors in this journey and deepen our partnership with Info Edge, Asha Impact, and Siana Capital," shared Tauseef Khan, co-founder and chief executive officer, Gramophone.
Gramophone is a market agritech company that provides Agronomy Services, Input and Output products in Madhya Pradesh, Chattishgarh, Maharashtra, and Rajasthan by way of an e-commerce marketplace.
"We at Z3PARTNERS are very excited to partner with Gramophone on this journey of bringing eCommerce to Rural India. Tauseef, Nishant, and Harshit's understanding of Agri-Sciences and eCommerce and their relationships with Farmers as their end customers has been instrumental in their growth and success so far. We are excited to be part of a story of bringing digital and technology solutions to our Farmers in India," said Gautam Patel, managing partner, Z3Partners.
With a one-stop solution for farmers, Gramophone aims to make farming intelligent for farmers and double their income. Today over 1 million farmers are benefitting from Gramophone's products and services owing to which the company has seen a fourfold increase in revenues over last year and expects to grow aggressively.
"We have now been partners with the Gramophone team for nearly four years and have seen tremendous growth in their evolution from being an advisory-led input commerce company to a full-stack Intelligent Farming platform that does end-to-end input to output linkage for farmers and retailers. The rapid adoption of technology in rural areas is leading to the bridging of information asymmetry and market access for farmers. We are excited to continue backing the team in this journey," added Kitty Agarwal, partner, Info Edge Ventures.
With a strong distribution and access to farm-level data, the company is working on partnerships with financial institutions to launch micro-insurance and lending products for the farming ecosystem which includes the farmers, input retailers, and output traders as well.
