[Funding alert] Aavishkaar Capital invests Rs 35 Cr in agritech startup Ergos in Series A round

Aavishkaar Capital, the venture capital arm of Aavishkaar Group, on Wednesday said it has invested Rs 35 crore in agritech startup Ergos.

Aavishkaar Capital had invested in Ergos in 2015 at the ideation stage, and has worked with the promoters in scaling the company, a statement said.

The Series-A funding round is expected to mop up Rs 100 crore with an Aavishkaar Capital partner, and a technology venture capital fund is also set to join the round, it added.

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Founded by Kishor Jha and Praveen Kumar, Ergoshas been building a GrainBank model that has been piloted in Bihar. The model enables farmers to digitise their foodgrain and also provides doorstep access to end-to-end post-harvest supply chain solutions to farmers.

The Ergos platform operates as a bank and offers storage, digitisation, credit, and liquidation facility to farmers through a single platform.

"With the right amount of investment and strong institutional backing, we have the ability to make the Prime Minister's vision of doubling the farmer income come true in a much shorter span. Our focus is to build this GrainBank to serve post-harvest requirements of all farmers with a focus on small and marginal farmers," Ergos Co-founder and CEO Kishor Jha said.

With Aavishkaar Capital's backing and other investors to join, the intent is to rapidly scale into nearby states and service more than a million farmers by 2025 with over 2,000 branch locations, he added.

In another development, MedGenome, the US and India-based genetic diagnostics, research and data company has announced that it has raised an investment of $55 million led by LeapFrog Investments on Wednesday. Existing investors Sofinaand Sequoia Capitalalso participated in the Series D round.

The company said it has completed over 200,000 genomic tests to date and obtains samples from more than 550 hospitals and 6,000 clinicians across India. 

(Disclaimer: Additional background information has been added to this PTI copy for context)

(Edited by Suman Singh)