[Funding alert] Agritech startup Gramophone raises Rs 24 Cr in Series A from Info Edge, Asha Impact and Better Capital

Indore-based agritech startup Gramophone on Tuesday announced it has raised Rs 24 crore ($3.5 million) in Series A funding from Info Edge, Raveen Sastry (Co-founder of Myntra.com), Asha Impact and Better Capital. 

Info Edge is an existing investor in Gramophone, infused Rs 14 crore in April this year and Rs 6.4 crore ($1 million) Pre-Series A financing round in March 2018.

Tauseef Khan, Co-Founder & CEO of Gramophone said, 

“Gramophone is on a mission to create a future of farming that puts ‘Farmers First’ by democratising knowledge, building transparency in transactions, and creating a connected ecosystem for farmers’ business. We are excited to see how farmers are adopting newer opportunities to maximise their income. This investment will enable us to invest aggressively on product, data science and scale operations across geographies.”

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Founded in 2016 by IIT graduates Tauseef Ahmad Khan, Nishant Vats Mahatre, Harshit Gupta and Ashish Rajan Singh, Gramophone provides actionable agronomic insights coupled with last mile delivery of quality agriculture inputs to farmers, through a smartphone app and a call center.

Gramophone’s data driven approach to agriculture economy has enabled them to identify and address the pain points of farmers and provide personalized solutions. The startup’s last mile delivery model has helped them serve over 2.5 lakh farmers in the remotest villages across central India. 

Commenting on the investment, Kitty Agarwal from Info Edge said, 

“Agriculture is the backbone of India’s economy and in our view, solving for the pain points of farmers, right from input procurement to financing to output market linkages makes for a huge opportunity. The company has shown tremendous growth and witnessed strong adoption among the farmer community since we first invested a year ago.”

The startup claims farmers on the Gramophone platform access plot level personalized insights enabling a 15-20 percent average reduction in cost of cultivation, and a 30-40% increase in yield to smallholder farmers. With lakhs of farmers consistently in touch with the startup, data generated via such user’s interaction is going to be the key ingredient for integrating credit and allied services, unlocking farmer’s true earning potential, it said in a release. 

Kartik Desai, Executive Director, Asha Impact, added,

“We were impressed by the Gramophone team’s intuitive understanding of customers’ needs, and by their ability to build a highly effective and scalable platform. We are excited to partner with them as they tap into this vast and underserved market.”

Info Edge is also an early investor in Zomato, Policybazaar, Shopkirana, Ustraa and several other technology startups. Recently, it poured in Rs 6 crore in a B2B footwear marketplace, ShoeKonnect.

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