[Funding alert] DeHaat raises $115M in Series D round from Sofina, Lightrock India, Temasek

DeHaat, The technology-enabled platform offering end-to-end agricultural services to farmers in India, today announced that it has raised $115 million in Series D funding led by Belgium-based investment firm Sofina and Lightrock India. Temasek co-invested in the round, with participation from existing investors Prosus, RTP Global, Sequoia Capital India, and FMO. 

Dexter Capital and Vertices Partners were the advisors of this funding round.

Shashank Kumar, Co-founder and CEO, DeHaat said in a press note, “We at DeHaat are on a mission of building the world’s largest agritech platform. We have raised $157 million from marquee investors in the last 30 months and our team has grown to a brigade of 850+ professionals with deep expertise in growth and strategy, supply chain, technology, and agricultural science. The last seven months have been phenomenal with 5x growth for DeHaat. Hence, we are now well poised to replicate the success in all major agriculture clusters of India in the next 12-15 months.”

The team will now use the funding to expand its technological offerings, for value-added services, and people.

Yana Kachurina, Principal, Sofina said, “Through our due diligence, we became convinced that DeHaat is bringing substantial value-add to the farming community in India. The uniqueness of its full-stack approach combined with the “phygital” go-to-market strategy further reaffirmed our view that the company is on track to become a significant player in the farming industry in India.”

ALSO READ

[The Turning Point] Conversations with farmers in Bihar led IIT alum to found agritech startup DeHaat

Based in Gurugram and Patna, and founded in 2012 by IIT, IIM, and NIT alumni Amrendra Singh, Shyam Sundar, Adarsh Srivastav and Shashank Kumar, DeHaat is a technology-based business-to-farmers (B2F) platform that offers full-stack agricultural services, including distribution of high-quality agricultural inputs, customised farm advisory, access to financial services, and market linkages for selling their produce. The team initially also had IIT-Kharagpur alumnus Manish Kumar, who is no longer a part of DeHaat.

Vaidhehi Ravindran, Partner at Lightrock India said, "We have been following DeHaat’s progress through the years and are impressed with their steep growth trajectory combined with a strong network of micro-entrepreneurs. Through innovative social engineering and tech-led execution, DeHaat has built the largest first-mile network for farmers and is well-positioned to help transform agriculture by improving yields and farmer income. ”

With an aim to drive efficiency and transparency in the $350 billion industry, DeHaat has been building a digitised network of farmers as well as last-mile service providers and provides direct access to farmers through its physical as well as a digital platform.

There are more than 850 unique agribusinesses currently active on the platform, which are getting last-mile access through the DeHaat platform in a transparent and efficient manner. The company has raised this round within nine months of the last round, and has completed two strategic acquisitions so far for inorganic growth. Institutional investors Omnivore Partners and Pi Capital (family fund of Narrottam Shekhsaria Group), who invested in the first institutional round in 2019, have exited partially in the current round.

DeHaat has currently built a rural retail network of more than 3,000 DeHaat microentrepreneurs for last-mile delivery as well as aggregation, serving more than 650,000 farmers located across Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, and Odisha. DeHaat has now started expanding to new geographies like Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, with a full set of agri offerings for farmers.

As per the company, DeHaat has a strong commitment to continue investing in the technology. Earlier this year, it acquired Farm Guide — a SaaS-based platform to provide satellite-based insights and advisory to farmers. The current tech team has grown to 120, building unique AI/ML-based solutions related to crop advisory, last-mile supply chain traceability, and B2B SaaS agritech platform for input sellers as well as output buyers.