June 24, 2019

by Lynda Kiernan

Equanimity Ventures has led a $2 million funding round for Mumbai-based agricultural supply chain aggregator, FreshVnF. GVFL and Manish Choksi, the executive vice chairman of Asian Paints Ltd., also participated in the round, which was the first funding raised by the company.

Founded only last year by Atul Kumar, Vikas Dosala, Sumit Rai, and Aashish Krishnatre, FreshVnF is a mission-driven agtech startup using machine learning to drive its tech platform to create a transparent, efficient, and streamlined agricultural supply chain.

Operating out of Mumbai, FreshVnF helps hotels, cafes, and restaurants digitally secure fresh fruits and vegetables with 16 hours of harvesting, through a data-driven platform that tracks inventory and replenishment.

Currently the startup states it delivers more than 15 tons of fresh food per day, and has a network of 300 outlets to which it delivers. However, plans include to increase these numbers to 100 tons per day and a delivery network of 5,000 outlets.

The capital from this round will help support the company in expanding its farm network, building out its tech platform, and meeting its efficiency goals.

“These funds will help us grow our farm network for consistent supplies, build our technology platform for seamless supply chain operations at scale, and help us achieve our goal of providing fresh farm produce to end customer within 16 hours of harvesting,” said Atul Kumar, co-founder of FreshVnF.

FreshVnF is joining an increasingly crowded space in the Indian food supply chain.

India is a top global producer of many agricultural products – producing 81.285 metric tons of fruit and 162.187 metric tons of vegetables, or approximately 14 percent of the global supply – according to the research article Scope of Supply Chain Management in Fruits and Vegetables in India, published in the Journal of Food Processing & Technology.  However, due to inefficiencies throughout the country’s supply chain, India sees food waste of up to 67 million tons each year – more than the total food production of Great Britain, reports Zee News.

Often in the agricultural investment field, challenges are seen as opportunities for innovation and return on investment – and increasingly, investors are seeing these inefficiencies in India’s supply chain as a means to not only have a positive social impact, but as a path to positive returns.

FreshVnF joins a field of competitors in India including Crofarm, Taaza Produce, Waycool,  InI Farms Pvt Ltd,  Allfresh, and SV Agri – all working to bring order to the country’s fragmented and opaque food supply chains.

However, this business model is not only taking off in India. B2B agtech platforms such as these are on the front line for investors looking to seize the opportunity for returns on investment that can be gained from streamlining and disrupting severely outdated supply chain systems in all emerging markets.

Earlier this month, The IFC, a member of the World Bank Group,  and TLcom, an Africa-focused venture capital firm, co-led a $10 million funding round for Twiga, a Kenyan agtech startup that uses mobile phone technology to align supply and demand in Africa’s large, but fragmented fruit and vegetable market.

Co-founded in Nairobi in 2014 by Grant Brooke – who ventured to Kenya in 2008 to conduct graduate work for his master’s degree – Twiga Foods was born from Brooke recognizing that, like in many developing nations, the disorganized nature of the agriculture and food value chain was benefiting the brokers and not the farmers, and was blocking any attempts at solving issues in the market.

For India, although it is true that the country is ranked second in the world for fruit and vegetable production, more than 30 percent of this output is lost to wastage, due in large part to a supply chain that is overrun with multiple intermediaries. And the realization of the volume of fresh food that is being lost to waste in India, one of the largest consumer markets in the world, has drawn the attention of innovators and investors alike.

FreshVnF is an agri-tech company that is disrupting the supply chain of sourcing and delivery of fresh farm produce through its technology-focused approach, thereby bringing significant efficiencies in the system and having a huge impact on the reduction in wastage of fresh produce in India,” said Sanjay Randhar, managing partner at GVFL. “We are delighted to back the credible FreshVnF team for their initiatives that result in better income for farmers and quality fresh products to consumers.”

– Lynda Kiernan is Editor with GAI Media and daily contributor to GAI News. If you would like to submit a contribution for consideration, please contact Ms. Kiernan at lkiernan@globalaginvesting.com.