Agritech platform DeHaat has raised Series A funding of $12 million led by Sequoia Capital. DeHaat was founded in 2012 by IIT, IIM, and NIT alumni Shashank Kumar, Amrendra Singh, Adarsh Srivastav, Shyam Sundar Singh, and Abhishek Dokania.
It is a technology-based platform offering full-stack agricultural services to farmers, including distribution of high quality agri inputs, customised farm advisory, access to financial services, and market linkages for selling their produce.
DeHaat eases the burden on farmers by bringing together brands, institutional financers and buyers on one platform.
It had earlier raised a $4 million pre-Series A round in March 2019, led by Omnivore and AgFunder, which was topped up in May 2019 with an additional $3 million of venture debt from Trifecta Capital.
Shashank Kumar, Co-Founder and CEO of DeHaat, said: “We are excited to partner with Sequoia India and FMO as we drive towards one million farmers on the DeHaat platform. Sequoia’s deep expertise in B2B platforms and technology products, combined with FMO’s expertise in agricultural value chain financing, will help DeHaat accelerate its growth while delivering massive impact for the farmers we work with.”
DeHaat does not charge any fee for its advisory, but takes a cut whenever farmers use its platform to buy agri-inputs or sell their crop yields.
The company today operates in 20 regional hubs in the eastern part of India — states such as Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Jharkhand and serves more than 210,000 farmers.