The organization Dehaat, will use the capital to expand its appearance, upgrade its technology foundation and fund its financial services offerings. Agritech platform DeHaat has raised $115 million as a part of its Series D round headed by Belgium-based Sofina and Lightrock India, besides Temasek.
Current investors Prosus, RTP Global, Sequoia Capital India and Dutch development bank FMO also participated.
Established in 2012, DeHaat gives end-to-end agriculture services to farmers, including crop advisory, market linkage platform, financial services, and products for farming such as feedstuff and fertilizers. The firm will use the money to expand its presence, upgrade its technology base and fund its financial services offerings. It has so far raised almost $157 million. Earlier this year DeHaat acquired FarmGuide.
FarmGuide is one of the best technology-oriented agritech startups, founded in 2016 by IIT alumnus Nikhil Toshniwal and Ankit Gupta. The startup developed a B2B SaaS product based on satellite data. It will help the customers in knowing farm boundaries. It will also provide data-driven advice for crops.
“DeHaat is on a mission to build the world’s largest agritech platform. Our team has grown to over 850 professionals with expertise in growth and strategy, supply chain, technology and agricultural science. The last seven months have been phenomenal, with five-fold growth. Hence, we are well poised to replicate the success in all major agriculture clusters of India in the next 12-15 months,” stated Shashank Kumar, co-founder and chief executive officer, DeHaat.
“We started offering financial services just five months back and look to add touchpoints for farmers. Our focus will be on bringing more relevant services to farmer partners, including animal-related services and crop spraying. DeHaat’s model will continue to be crop-agnostic,” he added.
What is DeHaat?
DeHaat was founded by IIT alumni Shashank and Manish Kumar. Amrendra Singh, Shyam Sundar, and Adarsh Srivastav are the other founding team members. Later, Manish left DeHaat. The company was founded in 2012. Its head offices are located in Patna and Gurugram. DeHaat is helping the farmers through its AI-based content about pest control and disease management in the crops. The company is providing more than 4000 inputs to farmers through its mobile app and call center.
Exclusive Interview with the Co-founder & CEO of DeHaat, Shashank Kumar
