DeHaat has raised $60 million in a Series E funding round co-led by existing investors Singapore’s Temasek Holdings and Belgium’s Sofina Ventures as it seeks to add more farmers on its agritech platform and broaden its service offerings.
Other existing investors RTP Global Partners, Prosus Ventures and Lightrock India, also took part in the round.
The latest round—DeHaat’s third fundraising in the past two years—valued the startup at $700-$800 million, co-founder and chief executive Shashank Kumar said in an interview. Dexter Capital and Vertices Partners were the advisers to DeHaat.
Prior to this round, the company raised $115 million in a Series D round led by Sofina and Lightrock India in October 2021. Temasek co-invested in the round with participation from existing investors, including Prosus, RTP Global, Sequoia Capital India and Dutch development bank FMO.
The company has still to utilize about 70% of the last fundraising, Kumar said.
Operated by Green Agrevolution Pvt. Ltd, Patna and Gurugram-based DeHaat were founded in 2012 by Amrendra Singh, Shyam Sundar Singh, Adarsh Srivastav and Shashank Kumar. The platform offers end-to-end agricultural services to farmers, including distribution of farm inputs, personalized farm advisory, financial services such as lending and insurance, and market linkages for selling produce.
“At this point, we want to focus and double down on the existing geographies, offering new products and value-added services to farmers instead of entering newer markets,” Kumar said.
DeHaat, which began its journey from Bihar, is present in eastern, northern, central and western India. “In the next six to nine months, we don’t see us making inroads in south Indian states,” he said.
Meanwhile, DeHaat is looking to acquire more agritech startups to add more services to its offerings as well as expand geographically. It is in advance talks to buy a firm that will help it in category expansion. “The deal will be around $10 million, which would be larger than all previous M&As,” Kumar said without elaborating,
DeHaat has so far acquired six companies, with the two latest deals – YCook India Pvt. Ltd and FieldFresh Foods – aimed at tapping into the global economy for Indian farmers.
In FY22, the company posted a loss of Rs 164 crore on operating revenue of Rs 1,275 crore. It is targeting to double its revenue this financial year, Kumar said.
DeHaat is also aiming to turn Ebitda (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) profitable in the next 12 months. “The 60x growth of DeHaat in the last 40 months has laid a foundation for a clear path to profitability,” Kumar added.
The company has a last mile supply chain in more than 110,000 villages in 150 districts through 10,000 plus centres for last-mile delivery as well as aggregation.
The company claims to be serving more than 1.5 million farmers in the states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Odisha, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh and Haryana.
“We’re aiming to bring on board 2.5 million farmers by March 2023 and over 4 million by the end of FY24,” Kumar said.
DeHaat claims to have onboarded 2,000 plus agribusiness institutions so far, including input manufacturers, fast-moving consumer goods companies, banks, insurance partners and bulk output exporters.