Agritech Startup DeHaat Lifts $12M Funding From Sequoia Capital

DeHaat, an India-based online startup, has landed $12 million funding from Sequoia Capital. Besides, Dutch entrepreneurial development bank FMO, existing investors AgFunder and Omnivore also took part in the funding round. The total funding of DeHaat has now reached $16 million and $3 million in venture debt. Moreover, it is also working on supply chains and improving data analytics.

With the latest investment, DeHaat is going to expand its business in on-boarding more small entrepreneurs for last-mile delivery, 2,000 rural retail centers, and will reach 1 million farmers at the end of next year. 

DeHaat is also working on automating its supply chain and developing more sophisticated data analytics.       

In 2012, Shashank Kumar founded DeHaat. It offers full-stack agricultural services to all the farmers around. It takes all the burden from farmers by bringing some of the brands together, buyers at a single platform, and financiers.

Shashank said, DeHaat helps all the farmers and protects thousands of agricultural products such as fertilizers, seeds, etc. We have created a whole extensive data on all kinds of crop tests to provide advice to all the farmers.   

Currently, DeHaat has a team of 242 members, also joined with 200 institutional partners. Later, once the season is over, it also helps partners to sell their products to the big market buyers like Reliance fresh, Heritage, Udaan, and food delivery giant Zomato.    

Shashank said, currently, DeHaat is operating more than 20 regional hubs on the east side of India, and in a few states like Jharjahand, UP, Bihar, and serving over 210,000 farmers.

He further added, we are maintaining an app that enables farmers to reach us and share their plans and needs. This app is available in many local languages and proving to be very helpful, especially for farmers who have no smartphones and away from latest updates associated with farming, technology, crope selling, etc. 

DeHaat is not charging a single penny for giving advice, but when it comes to buying agri-input or selling crop yields from its very own platform, in that condition it is going to charge.

VP at Sequoia Capital India, Abhishek Mohan said, the agriculture market in India is reaching $350 billion. 

The total funding of DeHaat has now reached $16 million and $3 million in venture debt. Moreover, it is also working on supply chains and improving data analytics.