[Funding alert] Gurugram-based Intello Labs raises $5.9M in Series A round from Saama Capital, others

Gurugram-based Intello Labsannounced on Wednesday that it has raised $5.9 million, which is approximately Rs 45 crore, in Series A funding led by Saama Capital.

New investors who participated in the round include Singapore-based agritech fund GROW, and US-based SVG Ventures THRIVE. Existing investors Omnivore and Nexus Venture Partners also participated in this round. Intello Labs was founded in 2016 by Milan Sharma, Nishant Mishra, Himani Shah and Devendra Chandani.

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The startup raised $2 million in seed funding from Nexus Venture Partners and Omnivore. Some of its clients include fresh produce growers, packers, aggregators, exporters, processors, foodservice, and retailers. Intello Labs reports to be aggressively growing in India while also pursuing global markets, including the likes of China, Southeast Asia, and the USA.

Milan Sharma, Cofounder and CEO, Intello Labs, said, this funding will help the startup accelerate growth in international markets, specifically the USA and across Asia Pacific.

He said, "There has been a significant spike in interest from these markets over the past few months, which was further accelerated by COVID-19, and now we have the firepower to go after these opportunities. This new demand, combined with the stickiness of our existing clients, validates the fact that our products bring much-needed transparency and standardisation to fresh produce value chains.”

Some of Intello Labs’ larger clients include Reliance Fresh, Dole, Ocean Spray, and many of the leading e- grocery companies in China and Southeast Asia.

With $500 billion of global fruits and vegetables wasted annually, Intello Labs is bringing transparency and standardisation to quality assessment, reducing value risk and food waste. The company aims to become the de-facto quality platform across F&V (fruits and vegetables) value chains for trading, procurement, grading, pricing, traceability, and marketing.

Commenting on the investment, Kiranbir Nag, Partner at Saama Capital, said there is a rapid and growing need for better and faster quality assessment of fresh produce across the value chain to improve the end consumers’ experience and to minimise the already high losses through wastages.

He said, "Intello’s scalable and non-destructive AI based digital suite of solutions is well placed to become an industry standard tool especially for the large buyers of and traders in fresh produce. The team has demonstrated this through its marquee and growing global customer base. We are excited to partner with the team for their next phase of growth.”