Full-stack Agritech Platform DeHaat Raises US$115 Million In Series D From Sofina, Lightrock And Temasek

DeHaat, the technology-based platform offering end-to-end agricultural services to farmers in India, today announced it has raised US$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, RTP Global, Sequoia Capital India and FMO. Dexter Capital and Vertices Partners were the advisors of this funding round.

Shashank Kumar, Co-Founder & CEO, DeHaat said, “We at DeHaat are on a mission of building the world’s largest Agritech platform. We have raised US$ 157 million from marquee investors in the last 30 months and our team has grown to a brigade of 850+ professionals with deep expertise of Growth & Strategy, Supply chain, Technology & Agricultural science. Last 7 months have been phenomenal with 5x growth for DeHaat. Hence we are now well poised to replicate the success in all major agriculture clusters of India in next 12-15 months.”

Based in Gurgaon and Patna and founded in 2012 by IIT, IIM & NIT alumni Amrendra Singh, Shyam Sundar, Adarsh Srivastav & 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.

With an aim to drive efficiency & transparency in this US$ 350 billion industry, DeHaat has been building a digitised network of farmers as well as last-mile service providers & providing direct access to farmers through its physical as well as digital platform.

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 & Odisha. DeHaat has now started expanding to new geographies like MP & Rajasthan with a complete 360 degree set of agri offerings for farmers.

As per the company, DeHaat has a strong commitment to continue investing in the technology. Earlier this year, it acquired Farm Guide - a SaaS based platform to provide satellite-based insights & advisory to farmers. The current tech team has grown to 120, building unique AI/ML based solutions related to crop advisory, last mile supply chain traceability & B2B SaaS agritech platform for input sellers as well as output buyers.

Yana Kachurina, Principal, Sofina said, “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.”

Vaidhehi Ravindran, Partner at Lightrock India said, "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. ”

DeHaat has emerged as the largest Indian agritech player with its unique full-stack approach while connecting all types of agri businesses (input sellers, output buyers, cattle feed manufacturers, financial institutions, warehousing companies) to the farming community. There are more than 850 unique agribusiness entities currently active on the platform, which are getting last-mile access through the DeHaat platform in a transparent and efficient manner. The company has raised this round within nine months of the last round, and has completed two strategic acquisitions so far for inorganic growth. Institutional investors Omnivore Partners and Pi Capital (family fund of Narrottam Shekhsaria Group) who invested in the first institutional round in 2019 have exited partially in the current round.