BharatAgri, an advisory-led farming inputs ecommerce platform, on Thursday said it has raised $4.3 million in a Series A round of funding led by early-stage venture fund Arkam Ventures. The round also saw participation from Capria Ventures, India Quotient, 021 Capital and Omnivore.

The fresh capital will be used to expand BharatAgri’s operations to new markets and strengthen its last-mile delivery, the company said in a statement.

Following the investment, Arkam Ventures’ managing director Rahul Chandra will join the board of BharatAgri, it added. The funding marks the Bengaluru-based fund’s third investment in the agritech space.

Founded by IIT Madras alumni Siddharth Dialani and Sai Gole, BharatAgri uses smart farming advisory services for farmers to identify and order the best inputs specific to their farming needs.

The company has built prediction algorithms that provide advisories customised by crop, region and climatic changes. Farmers can access these custom advisories to increase farm yield, lower input costs and reduce labour effort.

BharatAgri’s ecommerce platform–its revenue generator–offers over 10,000 agricultural products, including fertilisers, seeds, pesticides, insecticides and farming equipment, which are delivered across India.

“In the next three years, over 50 million farmers will use the internet for the first-time and we want BharatAgri to be their bridge to the digital era of agri that is now dawning…With this investment, BharatAgri aims to further strengthen its rural supply chain, expand the user base and become the largest and the de facto e-commerce platform for farmers,” Dialani said.

Dialani told ET that the company aims to close this financial year with more than Rs 70 crore in gross merchandise value (GMV). The platform has over 1 million unique monthly users, over 10,000 stock keeping units, and over 100 marketplace partners. It currently serves over 10 million farmers annually.

“Agri inputs is a $44 billion market in India and suffers from stockouts, misinformation and non-scientific usage behaviour… The credible advice from BharatAgri helps bridge the trust deficit that accompanies input purchasing and promises to open a digital channel for thousands of new products and brands that farmers seek to buy,” said Chandra at Arkam Ventures.

Arkam Ventures is also an investor in Jai Kisan, a rural fintech platform for farmers and retailers, and Jumbotail, a business-to-business (B2B) food and grocery marketplace and retail platform. In June, the firm launched its second fund with the aim to raise $180 million.

This article was originally published on The Economic Times >