Egreens, a Delhi-based investment firm, has launched a Rs 15 crore fund to back early stage agritech startups. The fund will target opportunities in innovative market linkages, artificial intelligence and machine learning in farming practices and the implementation of IoT (Internet of Things) across the supply chain.
Led by Mayank Chaurasia, the launch of the fund comes on the heels of an investment of Rs 15 crore in VegEase, the in-house food retail brand of Egreens. VegEase facilitates the delivery of fruits and vegetables with its cart-at-home model.
“We are looking at exciting startups that will eventually create forward and backward integration with VegEase. While VegEase is present in the B2C segment, we want to increase our footing in the B2B, B2B2C segments in diverse markets,” Chaurasia, CEO at Egreens, said.
Since its inception in January this year, VegEase claims to have already touched a customer base of over 15,000 in the Delhi-NCR region, with 5,000 customers onboarded in April alone. The company also claimed a return rate of 0.25% for unwanted produce, against the industry average of 2-3%.
Omnivore, Nabventures, India Quotient, Accion Venture Labs, Aavishkaar and Ankur Capital are among several early stage investors currently focused on agritech investments.
Earlier today, WEH Ventures announced the launch of its second fund with a Rs 100 crore corpus.