Mumbai-based rural fintech start-up Jai Kisan, which aims to “empower the growth of rural Indians, especially farmers,” raised $30 million (₹217 crores) through a combination of equity and debt in a Series A funding round led by Mirae Assets. The round also saw participation from existing investors Blume Ventures, Arkam Ventures, NABVENTURES, Prophetic Ventures, Better, other global investors, and prominent HNIs.
The funding will be used to hire talent and enhance engineering and data science capabilities, expand into new geographies, and start building an on-book portfolio, Jai Kisan said in a statement. Veda Corporate Advisors was the exclusive financial advisor to Jai Kisan for the fundraiser.
The three-year-old start-up, founded by Arjun Ahluwalia and Adriel Maniego, works towards enabling the financial inclusion of rural individuals and businesses. It empowers rural businesses through point-of-sale/purchase credit, thus creating scalability for rural businesses and helping to deploy low-cost formal credit to farmers and other rural individuals. It has made financial inclusion a reality for rural people and businesses, providing financial services with credit for online and offline, income-generating, and rural commerce transactions. In a country where farming is not considered a business by most moneylenders, thus creating a lack of formalized credit for rural businesses, Jai Kisan’s efforts have been exemplary.
Jai Kisan works with over 700 organized and unorganized entities in the space with a cumulative customer base of over 1.5 lakh rural individuals including farmers.
The pandemic, which has affected many industries worldwide, has not hampered the growth of Jai Kisan, as the start-up recorded “stellar growth on our top line and bottom line while ensuring robust portfolio quality. As most financial institutions took a step back due to reliance on ground operations, it was the resilient nature of our team that made Jai Kisan stand by its borrowers through these tough times,” said Arjun Ahluwalia, co-founder, and CEO, Jai Kisan. He viewed credit as an expectation by the Indian customer and not a value-added service.
“Jai Kisan has financed over 15% of the transactions which portrays the monetizability and quality of commerce being captured. The ability to have visibility and virality of high-quality transactions has enabled Jai Kisan to scale business by over 50% in 3 months. The unprecedented growth trajectory stands testament to Jai Kisan’s capabilities to deploy capital efficiently by focusing on core customer credit needs,” the start-up said.
Jai Kisan’s Bharat Khata service, launched in April 2020, helps individuals and businesses get access to cheaper financing, while simultaneously ensuring that the money they raise is being used for agri-inputs and equipment and other income-generating purposes and enablement of rural commerce transactions. It has already recorded over $380 million of annualized GTV run-rate across over 25,000 storefronts by the financial year that ended in March this year. The start-up operates in eight Indian states in South India and is looking to increase its presence across the country and increase the headcount.
“Jai Kisan is at the cusp of disrupting the rural financing industry and we’re glad to be a part of their growth story. Jai Kisan’s stellar growth, excellent asset quality, and expanding footprint make them a highly differentiated player in the segment,” said Ashish Dave, CEO of Mirae Asset India Venture Investments.
