Onato, a Bengaluru-based data-driven B2B platform for fresh produce, has announced seed financing of $2.2 million. The funding was led by Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India, with participation from Omnivore.

Onato is building a technology platform for Indian fruits and vegetables. The start-up plans to use this funding for talent acquisition and scaling up.

Onato was founded in February 2021 by entrepreneurs Vedant Katiyar and Ashish Jindal. The Indian F&V ecosystem grapples with arbitrary price setting, unreliable payment, and lack of access to real-time data between suppliers and the downstream market participants.

Connecting stakeholders

Onato’s platform aims to connects various stakeholders directly and uses data from the demand and supply side to bring transparency in volume and pricing, ensure timely payments, and help customers access new business opportunities. This, in turn, drives better margins and allows small and medium participants to expand business over time without deepening their credit burden.

“More than 60 per cent population of India is dependent on agriculture and yet, tech penetration in the agri-supply chain is quite low. Decision making is mostly intuition driven which leads to price and wastage volatility. I believe transparency in price discovery and fulfillment through technology will play a crucial role in streamlining the supply chains and decision making,” said Vedant Katiyar

“We envision that by harnessing the power of on-ground data, we can create a revolutionary change in the existing agri value-chain, which will result in better value distribution, for all participants from farmer up to end-consumer,” saidAshish Jindal.

Kanika Mayar, Executive Director of Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India, said “Most of India’s fresh supply moves through inefficient supply chains due to fragmented volumes, arbitrary pricing and complex credit management. Onato aims to solve for these critical bottlenecks, and we are excited to partner with Vedant and Ashish on their mission of bringing scalable disruption to the F&V supply chain in India.”

Jinesh Shah, Managing Partner of Omnivore, said, “Onato’s well-crafted digital intervention and robust fulfilment process are easing the burden of credit in the supply chain. The start-up is also solving the issue of income instability in Indian agriculture that so often compels farmers to exit farming altogether.”

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