JUNE 20219FARMART RAISES $2.4 MILLION IN FUNDING ROUND LED BY OMIDYAR NETWORK INDIA & AVAANA CAPITAL arMart, a mobile-based, agri-tech platform, has raised INR 17.7 crore or $2.4 million in pre-series A funding round led by Omidyar Network India and Avaana Capital. Existing investors Indian Angel Network and LetsVen-ture also participated in the round. The funding will be utilized towards its development, user base ex-pansion and scaling its market link-age capabilities. FarMart, founded by AlekhSang-hera and Mehtab Singh Hans, oper-ates India's first micro-SaaS led ag-ritech platform. The platform helps agri-retailers serve farmers better by providing them with access to information, market linkages and in-put. The company aims to form the complete value chain ­ from input to output ­ streamlined and remunera-tive. It does this by leveraging tech-nology, the trust of the agri-business communities, and optimizing un-der-utilized assets of the retailers. Within 9 months of launch, FarM-art has onboarded 10,000 retailers and has access to 400,000+ farmers across 15 states within the country. "Through our product-first ap-proach, we've got been able to cre-ate a scalable, trust-based distri-bution network that helps us gain access to farmers at the prima-ry mile. With this funding round, we seek to further our mission to become the biggest online platform connecting food businesses with over 10 million farmers through our nationwide retailer network by 2025," explained, Co-founder and CEO, AlekhSanghera. "Over the last year we've got made significant strides in devel-oping our platform and growing our trust within the agribusiness com-munity. MadhavTandan and Shruti Srivastava have both been incred-ible thought partners to us in our journey and that we are honoured to strengthen and formalize our re-lationship with Omidyar Network India and Avaana Capital. With such valued partners at this early stage, we are well on our thanks to move the needle in Indian agriculture," said, Mehtab Hans, the Co-founder of FarMart. "With its innovative tech-led, merchant-centric and distribu-tion-first model, Farmart has come into being on a journey to form an agri platform that helps increase value realization and income for farmers. they permit better access to markets; aggregate produce us-ing existing infrastructure and are using data at the core of their de-cision-making. Alekh and Mehtab's vision of solving for the wants of this massive and underserved mar-ket comprising ~1M merchants and ~140M farmers, resonates strongly with our investment thesis for the subsequent Half Billion and we're excited to partner with them," added MadhavTandan, Director, Omidyar Network India. "Alekh and Mehtab have creat-ed a business model that encapsu-lates our view on how technology can connect various stakeholders to boost realizations for farmers and offerings for buyers, while also building a scalable, defensible, and profitable business model. We are encouraged by the traction of their micro-entrepreneur-led market linkage platform and are confi-dent within the team's ability and knowledge to require this busi-ness to great heights moreover as deliver a positive impact to the availability chain for semi-perish-able agri produce," said Shruti Sri-vastava, Principal, Investments, Avaana Capital. FBudding Bizz
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