Agri-tech firm Arya raises $21 million from Quona Capital and existing investors

Agri-tech start-up Arya has raised $21 million (₹154 crores) in B series equity and debt funding. Quona Capital led the equity round , a venture firm focused on fintech in emerging markets, alongside existing investors LGT Lightstone Aspada and Omnivore, the company said in a statement.

Multiple lenders participated in providing additional debt financing to the company. The new funding will be used to expand funding to farmers through Arya’s embedded fintech arm, Aryadhan, and to strengthen its digital post-harvest services and market linkages platform, a2zgodaam.com

Arya provides digital solutions for storage, processing, financing, and market linkages and its clients include farmers, farmer producer organisations (FPOs), financial institutions, SME agri processors, commodity traders and corporate agribusinesses.

Arya claims that it helps farmers realise better value for their produce through village level commodity storage, integrated financing, and market linkage services to create better options for commodity sales.

“Of the food grains worth USD 130 billion produced by India annually, there are huge losses in primary and secondary markets due to lack of storage, forcing farmers to sell off-cycle for lower returns,” said Arya’s Co-Founder and CEO, Prasanna Rao. “These same farmers are dependent on financing for their cash flow needs but are vastly underserved, hurting their ability to store and sell their produce optimally. Arya’s digital solution pairs warehousing with financing and critical market linkage services to help smallholder farmers thrive.”

“Arya is addressing a vastly underserved market of farmers in India, half of whom previously had little access to post-harvest finance,” said Ganesh Rengaswamy, co-founder and Partner at Quona Capital. “We believe Arya’s unique approach, providing a full-service digital platform with embedded finance and differentiated efficiencies for small farm holders, will drive the future of farming in India.”

As part of the investment, Varun Malhotra, Principal at Quona Capital, will join the Board of Arya. Investment bank IndigoEdge was the exclusive advisor on the deal.