New Delhi-based cold chain startup New Leaf Dynamic Technologies, on Thursday said it has secured Rs 6.15 crore (around $900,000) in a pre-Series A funding round from former Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz’s investment fund Good Ventures.
The firm plans to deploy the fresh proceeds to scale its product portfolio and strengthening cold chain infrastructure across India.
Founded in 2012, New Leaf’s refrigeration technology uses biomass and farm waste to facilitate the increase of income for micro-enterprises by prolonging the shelf life of perishable produce, the company said in a statement. At present, the company claims to be supporting around 15,000 farmers, and looks to provide livelihoods and income of more than 2 lakh small and marginal farmers over the next three years.
“We will be utilising the capital raised through this round majorly to strengthen India’s cold chain infrastructure — reducing post-harvest losses by replacing conventional compressor technologies with New Leaf’s biomass-powered Made-in-India refrigeration technology which is affordable, sustainable and reliable,” said Akash Agarwal, co-Founder, New Leaf Dynamic.
Earlier, New Leaf had raised seed funding and incubation support from Social Alpha and Indigram Labs Foundation.
Not much investments have been witnessed across cold chain startups this year in India.
In April, Celcius Logistics Solutions Pvt Ltd, which operates the cold chain start-up Celcius had raised $4.5 million in a bridge funding round led by Mumbai Angels.
In November last, Mitsui & Co, one of Japan’s largest trading companies, and a part of the Mitsui Group, has invested in TCI Cold Chain Solutions, which is a cold chain logistics business of Transport Corporation of India.
