Full-stack Agritech Platform DeHaat Raises $115 Mn Series D From Sofina, Lightrock And Temasek DeHaat has been building a digitised network of farmers as well as last-mile service providers and providing direct access to farmers through its physical as well as digital platform
By Prabhjeet Bhatla •
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DeHaat, a technology-based platform offering end-to-end agricultural services to farmers in India, on Wednesday announced it has raised $115 million in Series D funding, led by Belgium-based investment firm Sofina and Lightrock India. Temasek co-invested in the round, with participation from existing investors Prosus Ventures, RTP Global, Sequoia Capital India and FMO. Dexter Capital and Vertices Partners were the advisors of this funding round.
"We at DeHaat are on a mission of building the world's largest Agritech platform. We have raised $ 157 million from marquee investors in the last 30 months and our team has grown to a brigade of over 850 professionals with deep expertise of Growth & Strategy, Supply chain, Technology & Agricultural science. The last 7 months have been phenomenal with fivefold growth for DeHaat. Hence, we are now well poised to replicate the success in all major agriculture clusters of India in the next 12-15 months," said Shashank Kumar, co-founder, and chief executive officer, DeHaat.
With an aim to drive efficiency and transparency in this $ 350 billion industry, DeHaat has been building a digitised network of farmers as well as last-mile service providers and providing direct access to farmers through its physical as well as digital platform.
"Through our due diligence, we became convinced that DeHaat is bringing substantial value-add to the farming community in India. The uniqueness of its full-stack approach combined with the "phygital' go-to-market strategy further reaffirmed our view that the company is on track to become a significant player in the farming industry in India," shared Yana Kachurina, principal, Sofina.
Based in Gurugram and Patna and founded in 2012 by IIT, IIM & NIT alumni Amrendra Singh, Shyam Sundar, Adarsh Srivastav and Shashank Kumar, DeHaat is a technology-based business-to-farmers (B2F) platform that offers full-stack agricultural services to farmers, including distribution of high-quality agricultural inputs, customised farm advisory, access to financial services, and market linkages for selling their produce.
"We have been following DeHaat's progress through the years and are impressed with their steep growth trajectory combined with a strong network of micro-entrepreneurs. Through innovative social engineering and tech-led execution, DeHaat has built the largest first mile network for farmers and is well positioned to help transform agriculture by improving yields and farmer income," added Vaidhehi Ravindran, partner, Lightrock India.
DeHaat has currently built a rural retail network of more than 3,000 DeHaat microentrepreneurs for last-mile delivery as well as aggregation, serving more than 650,000 farmers located across Bihar, UP, Jharkhand and Odisha. DeHaat has now started expanding to new geographies like MP and Rajasthan with a complete 360 degree set of agri offerings for farmers.
