In a significant development, Unnati Agri, a fintech-driven agriculture service platform, has raised INR 60 Cr in a Series A funding round from Incofin Investment Management, NabVentures, and Orios. Unnati will utilize the fresh capital to augment its tech infrastructure and increase its uStore network.
Unnati is enhancing its technology platform by adding a wide range of new features to its farmer and retailer apps, including the introduction of Artificial Intelligence, led features related to farm diagnostics, farming lifecycle management, supply chain management for partners etc. The company is investing heavily in AI and Machine Learning platforms for bringing the latest digital tools to farmers and uStore partners.
To date, Unnati has served more than 3 Lac farmers through its network of 20000 plus uStore network. It has been digitizing agri-input retailers, traders and other ecosystem players. Unnati platform with its partner network offers digitally enabled services to farmers helping them improve their farm incomes. It has grown more than 15x over the last 12 months owing to an increase of its platform usage.
Commenting on the funding, Ashok Prasad, CEO and Co-founder of Unnati, said, “Unnati has been committed to enhancing the lives of farmers as well as our retail partners through technology solutions. Unnati has built several innovative solutions to enable farmers and retailers to grow and scale their business, and our growth trajectory has been remarkable so far.
He further added "We are happy to announce that we have raised our Series A round of funding and are thrilled to have marquee investors backing us in our journey. We will continue to work towards our ultimate goal, which is to bring all farmers across the country onto a single digital platform which nurtures ‘farmpreneurs’ enabling them to double their farm income.”
“We are delighted to partner with the high-performance founders- Ashok and Amit of Unnati Agri as they scale a tightly knit strategy of an integrated rural ecosystem of knowledge-based farm input advisory, financial inclusion and supply chain integration through the use of technology. Incofin looks forward to supporting them as they execute this unique combined agri-tech and fin-tech opportunity,” said Rahul Rai, Partner, Incofin India.
“As digital expands across India, one of its most important touchpoints is the Agricultural Supply Chain. Unnati is building a distributed model to optimize upstream supplies for the farmers and we are excited to partner with Amit & Ashok to build what promises to be an exciting business”. said Rehan Yar Khan, Managing Partner, Orios.
NABVENTURES Fund-I, the flagship fund of NABVENTURES Ltd. backed by NABARD, has followed up on its initial investment in the company, by also participating in this round of fund-raise.
As a part of its network augmentation, the platform is also looking at geographical expansion to Haryana, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and further expansion in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Maharashtra. Unnati aims to create 5 million ‘farmpreneurs’ by enabling them with relevant digital tools to power their farming business. Unnati is planning to invest heavily on farmer-focused initiatives in future. The transaction has been supported by Sumeet Seraf of Equity360.
