Pumpkart, an e-commerce platform for farm equipment and water pumps, said it has raised $2 million funding under the Karnataka government’s Samruddhi scheme.
Karnataka had unveiled the Samruddhi scheme to enable entrepreneurs from the economically backward section of the state set up their own retail stores.
The Grow India Ventures Pvt Limited-operated firm has been picked up by the Karnataka government under the scheme to open over 100 stores in the state.
Pumpkart said it has pegged Rs 65,000 crore for organising the farm equipment market.
The platform further claimed that it is working on replacing the traditional old farm equipment with the latest model. It also targets 10% of the total six lakh Indian villages to transform rural retail into modern ones.
“We’re on a mission of revolutionising the biggest sector our economy is based upon. We’re organising the unorganized market of farm equipment and agricultural machinery,” said K S Bhatia, Founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Pumpkart.
The Punjab-based firm said it has recently inked a pact to set up 1,200 stores across Uttar Pradesh. It believes that partnerships like these will generate employment and entrepreneurship opportunities for people of rural pockets.
“Pumpkart has enabled a lot of people with employment and entrepreneurship by opening more than 75 stores across Karnataka. This is what we are all about, and we will keep doing it throughout our journey,” Bhatia said.
In 2019, the business-to-business (B2B) e-marketplace had secured an undisclosed amount of funding from the Chairman for startups and entrepreneurship at the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Dinesh Dua, increasing its valuation to $9.87 million (around Rs 70 crore).