AgroStar, a mobile commerce platform for farmers that sells agricultural inputs on “direct-to-farmer” basis, has today announced that it has raised $10 million in its Series B round of funding, led by Accel Partners.
The capital raised in the current round, will be used towards technological upgradation, which includes prioritising building technological capacities in-house, expanding across states in the country. Further, the money will also be utilized on hiring in areas of technology, marketing, data science and analytics.
Talking about the fresh investment, Shardul Sheth, cofounder of AgroStar, said,
We want to grow geographically -currently, we have the highest concentration of users in Gujarat, followed by Maharashtra and Rajasthan. Out of over one million users, approximately 1 lakh farmers have downloaded the app, with our monthly active users ranging between 30,000 and 40,000 farmers. Upcoming target markets would include Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh.
Currently, the company is working on an image recognition feature for the app, which will enable farmers to determine problems and figure out solutions regarding their crops through photographs taken using the application.
The company aims to break even in the next 12 to 18 months. The platform, which raised $4 million in 2015 from IDG Ventures India, now has over 150 channel partners including national agricultural companies and multinational companies like Monsanto.
AgroStar was founded by Sitanshu Sheth & Shardul Sheth with an aim to transform agri-business for farmers in rural India. Through its platform, farmers can buy seeds, nutrients, crop protection, as well as hardware products related to farming. For this, the company has tied up with many national and international agricultural companies.
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