[Funding alert] Rural social network startup Krishify closes $6.2M in pre-Series A round

Rural social network Krishify on Wednesday announced that it has closed $ 6.2 million in Pre-Series A round with the additional participation of agritech VC fund Omnivore, alongside existing investors Ankur Capital, Omidyar Network India, and Orios Venture Partners.  Krishify had already raised $ 2.7 million in August 2021, and has now closed the Pre-Series A round with an additional $ 3.5 million in funding. 

With over 6.5 million downloads and 1.3 million monthly active users, Krishify is India’s largest social network for farmers and rural communities. Leveraging machine learning, AI, and natural language processing (NLP), Krishify’s app delivers highly personalised experiences to agriverse participants. 

The Gurugram-based startup plans to use this round for accelerating pan-India growth and to further refine the technology for an enhanced user experience in the agriverse. 

Founded in 2019 by IIT alumni Rajesh Ranjan, Manish Agrawal, and Avinash Kumar, Krishify is also accelerating monetisation on the network via advertising, lead generation, and marketing services for companies targeting rural consumers. 

ALSO READ

This Bihar boy’s agritech startup is building the ‘Facebook and LinkedIn’ for farmers and agri traders

Commenting on the investment, Rajesh Ranjan, Co-founder of Krishify, said, “We are excited to partner with Omnivore in our journey to build India’s agriverse. More and more Indian farmers are connecting via Krishify every day, as the network breaks down geographic barriers and helps people interact to access knowledge and do business. We recently met a third-generation guava farmer in Rajasthan who was selling record numbers of guava saplings to farmers across Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, and Maharashtra who only could have ever discovered him through the Krishify app.”

“Rising smartphone penetration in rural India has created an opportunity to build a farmer-centric social network for India’s 130 million cultivators and their families, a total population of over 600 million. Krishify is building a content-centric agriverse to help farmers and rural communities realize greater success and joy through peer-to-peer engagement,” added Mark Kahn, Managing Partner at Omnivore.