[Funding alert] Sequoia-backed B2B trade platform Bijak is raising $11.8 Mn in Series A

B2B trade platform for agricultural sector, Bijak, on Monday said it is raising $11.8 million in its Series A round from its existing investors, including Omnivore Partners, and Tempo Ventures, Bi Fund, among others.

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Bijak offered investors 2,591 Series A CCCP shares at Rs 100 each, at a premium of Rs 3.50 lakh, according to filings with the Registrar of Companies, as accessed by YourStory, taking the value of the total amount of preference shares to Rs 90.7 crore, or $11.8 million.

Mark Kahn, Managing Partner at Omnivore said, “Bijak has blown away everyone’s expectations about how fast an agritech startup can grow in India. Omnivore looks forward to supporting Bijak as they scale pan-India while radically transforming agricultural commodity markets.”

Gurugram-based Bijak enables traders, wholesalers, and food processors to keep a ledger of their transactions, access transparent pricing, optimise logistics, and improve their working capital cycles. Founded in May 2019 by Nukul Upadhye, Mahesh Jakhotia, Jitender Bedwal, Daya Rai, and Nikhil Tripathi, Bijak aims to bridge the information asymmetry and lack of accountability across trade in agricultural activities.

The company's proprietary app is available in several local languages, and currently caters to the country's agricultural states such as Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Bihar, and Uttarakhand.

Nukul said in a statement:

“We are  thrilled to partner with RTP Global as we try to make agricultural markets more transparent. This funding would help us scale our technology team and roll-out new features. We are also thankful to all our existing investors for their continued support and conviction.”

In December last year, Bijak had raised $2.5 million from Omnivore Partners, Omidyar Network India, Sequoia Capital India's rapid scale-up programme Surge, and Better Capital. Sequoia Capital had also shortlisted Bijak as one of the 20 early-stage startups from India and Southeast Asia for the second cohort of its Surge Accelerator Programme.

In an earlier conversation with YourStory, Co-Founder Nakul had said:

"Focused on addressing challenges such as accountability and trust in the B2B agri commodity trade, we are targeting a $200 billion market in India, which has almost five million plus middlemen. Additionally, we have customised the app for agricultural commodity traders, with terminologies used in the mandis (wholesale markets) that they are familiar with.”