[Funding alert] FarMart raises $10M in Series A investment round led by Matrix Partners India

FarMart, a B2B SaaS-led food supply platform, has raised $10 million funding led by Matrix Partners India, with participation from Innoven Capital and existing investors — Omidyar Network India, Avaana Capital, and 500 Startups.

Angel investors participating in the round include Amit Lakhotia (Founder, Park+), Jitendra Gupta (Founder and CEO, Jupiter), KP Balaraj (Ex-founder, WestBridge Capital and Sequoia Capital India), OfBusiness Founder’s Fund, Revant Bhate and Dhyanesh Shah (Co-founders, Mosiac Wellness) among other marquee angel investors.

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The funding will be used by the FarMart distribution network across the country, scale product capabilities as well as grow the team. The round also provides an exit for its early investors Indian Angel Network and LetsVenture. FarMart’s fundraising announcement comes soon after its $2.4 million pre-Series A funding in June 2021. 

Alekh Sanghera, Co-founder, FarMart said, “This fundraise is a true reflection of the vision we have at FarMart, which is to build an operating system for the agribusiness community in India, starting with agri-retailers who are at the core of our business. Our remarkable growth over the past few months is testament to our thesis of building a product-first and an asset-light business, driven by our amazing team.”

Founded by childhood friends, Alekh Sanghera and Mehtab Singh Hans, the startup addresses the fragmented $300 billion food supply market in India. FarMart’s tech platform enables food businesses to source quality produce in large quantities directly from the farm at cheaper pricing and a faster turnaround time. 

Sudipto Sannigrahi, Vice President, Matrix India commented, “We are big believers of Alekh and Mehtab's vision of creating a capital-efficient and seamless food distribution network for the agri-retailer and farmer community. FarMart’s tech-led scalable model makes them well-positioned to disrupt the $300 billion+ Agriculture market and their extremely strong growth over the last six months is a testament to their model and execution. We're excited to be a part of this disruptive journey with the FarMart team!"

FarMart’s model is centred around agri-input retailers and solves key challenges faced by the retailer community. Firstly, FarMart provides a micro-SaaS platform that enables retailers to digitise their workflow, increase sales to farmers and conduct their existing business in a more efficient manner.

Mehtab Singh Hans, Co-founder, FarMart said, “Riding on the wave of liberalization of agri-markets, we are uniquely positioned to build a deep and liquid delivery-spot market for agri-commodities. Farmers across the country would have direct access to formal markets, selling any type of commodity within a vicinity of 5-7 km from their farms.”

FarMart helps retailers procure commodities from farmers and sell directly to large enterprises through the FarMart platform which opens up a completely new source of revenue for them. Its network of retailers provides a unique and extremely vast distribution power in the form of a “one-stop-hub” at the farm and leads to significant benefits for the farmers as well in the form of 15 percent higher realisations, reduced transportation costs, and reliable partners for both input and output linkage. 

Madhav Tandan, Director, Omidyar Network India commented, “We are excited to continue supporting FarMart on their mission to create an innovative asset-light, tech-led model built to help the company with its strategy of helping agri-retailers and farmers increase their incomes. In less than a year, the company has shown impressive growth in its merchant base and revenue while also working towards creating meaningful lives for the farmers and agri-input retailers they work with.”

Since launching the market linkage platform six months back, the company has scaled its network to over 15,000 active agri-input retailers and 750,000 farmers who have shipped over 30,000+ tonnes of produce on the FarMart platform. Today, its 100+ B2B buyers include ITC, Olam, and Cargill among others. The company’s SaaS-enabled asset-light model along with low working capital has helped them achieve this exponential growth in an extremely capital-efficient manner.

Shruti Srivastava, Principal, Avaana Capital, added, “Digitisation of agricultural value chains has the potential to improve access to inputs for farmers and enhance market access and realizations for output. FarMart's approach of leveraging existing stakeholders in the value chain allows them to scale this digitization rapidly in a capital-efficient manner. The company's progress has been a strong validation of this approach and we continue to be bullish on the team's ability to build a game-changing business here.”

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