SaaS startup FarMart gets $10 million from Matrix Partners India, others : Tech News

Mumbai: FarMart, a software-as-a-service-led food supply platform, has raised $10 million in a funding round led by Matrix Partners India.

Innoven Capital as well as existing investors Omidyar Network India, Avaana Capital, and 500 Startups also participated in the fundraising that was a mix of primary and secondary transactions, according to a company statement. The round has provided an exit to early investors Indian Angel Network and LetsVenture.

Angel investors, such as Amit Lakhotia (founder, Park+), Jitendra Gupta (founder and CEO, Jupiter), KP Balaraj (ex-founder, WestBridge Capital and Sequoia Capital India), OfBusiness Founder’s Fund, Revant Bhate and Dhyanesh Shah (cofounders, Mosaic Wellness) also pitched in.

The capital will be used by the agritech startup to expand its distribution network across the country, scale product capabilities and grow the team. In June, the company
had raised $2.4 million in a pre-Series A round.

“Our vision is to build an operating system for the agribusiness community in India, starting with agri-retailers who are at the core of our business,” said Alekh Sanghera, cofounder and chief executive at FarMart.

Founded in 2015 by Sanghera and Mehtab Singh, FarMart’s model is centred on agri-input retailers and solves key challenges faced by the retailer community. The Gurugram-based startup provides a micro-SaaS platform that enables retailers to digitise their workflows, increase sales to farmers and conduct their existing business in a more efficient manner. It also helps retailers procure commodities from farmers and sell directly to large enterprises through the FarMart platform, opening up a completely new source of revenue for them.

“Farmers across the country would have direct access to formal markets, selling any type of commodity within 5-7 km of their farms,” Singh said.

Since launching the market linkage platform six months back, the company has scaled its network to over 15,000 active agri-input retailers and 750,000 farmers who have shipped over 30,000 tonnes of produce on the FarMart platform. Today, it has more than 100 business-to-business buyers, including ITC, Olam, and Cargill.

“FarMart’s tech-led scalable model makes them well-positioned to disrupt the $300B+ agriculture market and their extremely strong growth over the last six months is a testament to their model and execution,” said Sudipto Sannigrahi, vice president at Matrix India.