Kisanwala, agritech solutions startup, has raised around $1 million in an Angel round led by veterans from the tech and agri industry as investors are betting big on the Indian Agriculture space. This funding will be used towards building the tech to provide holistic one stop solutions for the agriculture ecosystem and building the flagship initiative “social selling concept called Market on Wheels" of the company.
The startup was bootstrapped for the most part of its first year and developed the early MVP, set up the marketing programs as well as developed early relationships with the key stakeholders.
Kisanwala aims to change the way agri supply chain operates both on the input and output side and focus on helping farmers increase their income based on different services and partnerships that they run with the Agri community. Some of the key pillars of this ecosystem – supply chain, technology, financial Services, Agronomy Advisory need revolutionary changes and different monetization mechanisms. The growth needs to be inclusive by supporting the current players to evolve to new and better roles and business models. The farmer is at the pivot of everything that the company is building, it said in a statement.
The main aim of the company is to be the largest platform and marketplace in the agri ecosystem which is a trillion dollar market just in India. The company aspires to have a predictable and higher income for the farmers while enabling them to produce more to meet the food security needs of India and the world. The company wants to achieve this by Setting by a Brigital (brick & mortar + Digital) mechanism called Market on Wheels . The company also intends to create employment for agri graduates by helping them become agripreneurs and providing services to the farmer using the Kisanwala platform, it added.
The KisanWala app has 50,000 downloads on the Google Play Store. The Kisanwala Farmer app is localized and personalized so that the farmer gets an advisory that is local to their region , see content and information that is pertinent to their region & products and services that they see are personalized based on the crops they grow and the time in the crop cycle. The farmer can log onto their app and search for inputs like seeds, crop protection, crop nutrition, implement items based on various parameters, read the product description in their local language and then order the products with a single click. Farmers can look for advice on the app as the company builds their machine learning algorithms, today they can even call the call centres of the company and get advice from qualified Agronomists who are Agri Graduates having field experience.
Currently the company has Fifty thousand Farmers (App downloads) on the platform and they are about to reach a million farmers by 2023 and be able to provide high quality services to them. In the coming 3 years the company would like to be able to support & provide services to about 9 Million farmers, develop agronomy solutions using AI / ML technology that will be available free to small and medium size farmers. On their Social Selling side, the Market on Wheels, A flagship initiative of the company, they would like to get to about 3000 Market on wheels in 3 years and have enabled about 5 thousand Agripreneurs to start their businesses and support farmers to improve the quality, predictability of their produce and in turn increase their income.
On the latest fundraiser, Co-Founder of Kisanwala, Parag Modi said, “Having worked in the technology & blue collared space for many years, I could clearly see that farmers life and income levels could be alleviated by access to technology and using it to solve problems around access to high quality agronomy, quality products at their doorstep , agri services like drone based spraying , financial services etc.. Agri-Tech Solutions platforms like Kisanwala can bring about a huge difference in the farmers' lives. With the largest customers in our belt and with the best team on board, we aim to reduce market information asymmetry in order to help farmers work more efficiently and produce better yields. We are thankful to all our incoming investors who have believed in us and our growth vision.”
Talking about the potential of the Agriculture market, Co-Founder of Kisanwala, Mr. Suresh Alturi said, “88% of Indian farmers fall under low-income groups who are small and marginal. Rural economy is the backbone of India which contributes 30% of India GDP which will be around $5 trillion by 2025. We felt that our theme gels very well and addresses the needs of these neglected communities which has a huge impact on the overall rural ecosystem through our ‘Inclusive Business Model’. Our farmer-centric digital tools are designed in a way to provide a one-stop solution for all farm needs as an easy, accessible and intuitive single neutral platform. We offer services including soil testing, crop protection, crop nutrition, seeds, implements to improve the productivity of farmers and to make them sustainable in the face of threats to agriculture due to climate change”
