Farmizen Solutions Pvt. Ltd, which runs an eponymous organic farming platform, has raised an undisclosed amount in a seed round, its co-founder and CEO Shameek Chakravarty told VCCircle.
Investors included venture capital firm Venture Highway, former Canaan Partners managing director and Indifi co-founder Alok Mittal, founders of gaming portal adda52.com Mohit Agarwal and Anuj Gupta, and a few other angels.
Bangalore-based Farmizen was founded in January by former Amazon executives Chakravarty and Sudaakeran Balasubramanian, and entrepreneur Gitanjali Rajamani, who had previously founded urban gardening startup GreenMyLife.
The Farmizen app allows users to rent mini-plots in suburban areas for a monthly fee. Farmers then grow vegetables organically for these subscribers. Users can choose the vegetables they want to be grown and keep track of the harvest using the app.
"We will use the capital to enhance our network of partner farms across peri-urban areas of Bangalore and for farm automation, especially for small farms," said Chakravarty.
Venture Highway was founded by Samir Sood, former head of corporate development for South Asia and Australia at Google, and advised by Neeraj Arora, business head at WhatsApp. It has previously backed companies such as BetterPlace, ShareChat, Meesho, Sigtuple,and Moglix among others.
"We invest in areas where we have extensive experience and relationships, and where we can be a trusted and valued partner to our portfolio companies,†said Sood.
The agri-tech space has seen several venture capital investments of late.
Last month, Crofarm, which connects farmers with retailers, raised Rs 5 crore ($783,000) in a pre-Series A round led by US-based venture development firm Factor[e] Ventures.
In March, Indian Angel Network had made an undisclosed investment in Gurgaon-based FarMart, a renting platform for farm equipment.
Prior to that, Delhi-based VDSS Agri Tech Pvt. Ltd, which owns and operates Paalak.in, raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from a clutch of angel investors.
In January, Mumbai-based RML AgTech Pvt. Ltd, which provides support services to farmers via mobile phones, raised $4 million (Rs 27.2 crore) from existing investor IvyCap Ventures.
