BharatAgri, a digital farm advisory start-up has raised $6.5 million (about ₹48 crore) in a Series A round led by Omnivore. Existing investors India Quotient and 021 Capital also participated in the latest round.
The Bengaluru-based BharatAgri offers artificial intelligence-based agronomy services on a paid subscription basis to farmers through an app-based platform. It has also recently forayed into e-commerce selling agri-inputs such as seeds, fertilisers and pesticides to its subscribers online.
Founded in 2017 by Sai Gole and Siddharth Dialani, both alumni of IIT Madras, BharatAgri currently operates in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh and currently has about 33,000 active farmer paid users.
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“We plan to use the funding to expand our operations to States such as Chhatisgarh, Rajasthan, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu and for deeper integration of the input e-commerce business and refining existing technology offering,” said Siddharth Dialani, co-founder and CEO, BharatAgri told BusinessLine .
“There has been a greater adoption of our services in the past 12 months. From a monthly subscription of 240 in August last year, we have reached around 10,000 now and are targeting a subscription base of 1.5 lakh farmers by March 2022,” he said.
Dialani said the subscription renewal rate has been around 65 per cent. The company charges about ₹600 per acre for a six-month subscription from farmers for agronomy services that are offered using artificial intelligence, remote sensing and satellite imagery.
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BharatAgri’s proprietary algorithm collects data on more than 30 critical parameters to provide customised advisory across multiple crops, including grains, pulses, fruits, and vegetables.
Farmers get a fully digital and automated service, at an affordable price, that provides targeted insights at appropriate times and regular monitoring of crops. BharatAgri plans to aggressively scale up in the Rabi 2021 season and launch its Series B round in January 2022.