Indian agtech startup CropIn Technology Solutions has secured an undisclosed round of funding led by early stage Singapore-based fund BEENEXT, and including existing investors Ankur Capital and BSP Fund – a seed fund managed by Boston-based impact investor Invested Development.
Founded in Bangalore in 2010 by Krishna Kumar, CropIn Technology develops tech platforms that offer farmers agricultural and analytic data solutions. It provides SaaS-based services to agricultural producers and players along the supply chain that brings “farms on the cloud” and enables data-informed farming through real-time insight so farmers and others can monitor risks, productivity, weather, and traceability regulations from seed to harvest.
CropIn’s SmartSales and MWarehouse products allow for mobile management and tracking of storage and sales of agricultural products, while the company’s SmartFarm app allows farmers or operators to manage production and make informed decisions based on real-time alerts, recorded history of all pests and diseases along with expert advice and analysis, the creation of action plans, and the scheduling of practices. The company also offers crop analytics services that assembles farm data in a structured format and generates customizable reports and dashboards.
Currently present in 18 states in India and across 12 countries, CropIn said that it has digitized about 2.1 million acres, producing more than 100 crop varieties, and the 90-person team is working to expand the company’s reach across Southeast Asia and Africa.
“With this fundraise we are funding our investments in technology, data science and predictive technologies to detect and predict crops in different regions,” said Kumar.
Eye on India
India is currently second in the world for agricultural output; additionally, the country saw an agricultural growth rate of 4 percent in 2016-17, a rate that is expected to remain stable for 2017-18, according to Shobhana Pattanayak, India’s farm ministry secretary.
Furthermore, between fiscal year 2014 and 2015, the scale of India’s agriculture industry and its tangential businesses saw growth approaching 100 percent, with agricultural exports increasing from a value of $24.7 million in 2011-12 to a value of $32,08 billion in 2015-16, according to Inc42 Datalabs.
Like other regions in the world, interest in crop management software in India is increasing, estimated to be growing at over 17 percent annually.
Although this current round of funding led by BEENEXT is being labeled as “pre-Series A”, CropIn Technology raised $2 million in what it called a Series A in September of last year from Denmark-based Sophia Investment ApS.
“A robust growth chart, faith of our existing investors and continued traction in the agribusiness space for penetration made it ideal for us to raise this investment with an intent of expanding our belief of serving 20 million farmers by 2020,” said Kumar at the time.
This momentum in the digitation of Indian agriculture is being reflected in recent deals. In June 2015, Delhi-based EM3 AgriServices Pvt Ltd. secured a US$3.3 million investment from Aspada Investment Company – a venture capital investor backed by the Soros Economic Development Fund.
EM3 provides a full range of on-farm production services employing modern machinery and technologies by the company’s trained personnel, to small farmers in India on a per-use basis. Small farmers’ inability to afford modern machinery and technologies has been a major cost prohibitive factor to improving yields in the country. EM3 is targeting the elimination of the necessity of ownership by providing services and production practices that will enhance yields through a pay-per-use service model.
More recently, in August of this year, Indian agtech farm-to-business startup and app developer Crofarm raised a US$1.5 million seed round that included U.S.-based Factor[e] Ventures, Mukul Singhal and Rohit Jain, former principals at SAIF Partners; angel investor Himanshu Aggarwal; co-founder and CEO of Aspiring Minds, Ashish Gupta; and vice president at Paytm, Sunil Goyal, among others.
Through its app Crofarm Agriproducts, the startup sources produce directly from its network of more than 10,000 farmers, which it provides to large scale retailers including Big Basket, Grofers, Reliance Retail, Jubilant Foodworks, Big Bazar, and Metro Foods.
Based on the orders placed through its digitized platform by retailers, Crofarm is able to advise farmers on how much to harvest and what specifications retailers are looking for in their produce. This system ensures zero waste between the field and the store, and provides the freshest, highest quality produce for delivery to customers.
Teruhide Sato, managing partner at BEENEXT, has alluded to the promise that exists in “marketplace” sectors such as data-driven agtech saying, “We love early early stage entrepreneurs and will continue to focus on sectors like marketplaces since they accumulate proprietary data from customers. We are here for the long term.”
-Lynda Kiernan