BharatAgri (formerly LeanAgri) on Thursday said it has raised $6.5 million (Rs 47.7 crore) in Series A funding round led by new investor Omnivore.
The funding round saw existing investors India Quotient and 021 Capital, it added.
The startup, which is operated by LeanCrop Technology Solutions Pvt Ltd, will use the fresh capital to expand its subscriber base beyond Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, accelerate the growth of its inputs marketplace, and refine its tech offering.
The company said it plans to scale up aggressively during the 2021 rabi season.
The startup said it has seen 20x growth in paid subscription sales with a 65% renewal rate, has over 33,000 active paid users and aims to expand its subscription base to 150,000 by March 2022.
BharatAgri was founded in 2017 by Sai Gole and Siddharth Dialani, both engineering graduates from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras. The startup says its technology solution provides a paid subscription to farmers for personalised agriculture and farming advisory.
“Even three years ago, it was unimaginable that rural Indians would be paying monthly subscription fees to Netflix and YouTube, which is normal today. BharatAgri has demonstrated that the same is possible with farmers, who see so much value in our advisory platform that they willingly pay subscription fees,” Dialani, CEO of BharatAgri, said.
“In the next few months, we will be expanding our platform to provide other agricultural services, starting with direct-to-farmer agri input supply,” he added
Mark Kahn, managing partner at Omnivore, said, "BharatAgri is the only agritech startup in India to successfully monetise a purely digital product for farmers.”
Previously, Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal-backed 021 Capital and India Quotient invested an undisclosed sum in a pre-Series A round in BharatAgri.
A slew of tech startups focused on agriculture have attracted funding from investors in the past few months.
Earlier this year, DeHaat, which is run by Green Agrevolution Pvt Ltd, raised $30 million (around Rs 220 crore) in a Series C funding round led by Prosus Ventures.
DeHaat is among the several startups in the agri-tech sector to receive interest from strategic players and investors, especially social-impact backers.
