Krishify, India’s first farmer-centric networking platform, has raised US$2.7 million in a pre-series A funding round led by Omidyar Network India, Ankur Capital, and existing investor Orios Ventures. Co-founders of Country Delight, Nitin Kaushal and Chakradhar Gade, also participated as angel investors. The platform will use the funds to continue expanding its user base, currently at 3.5 million users and growing 30 per cent month-on-month, as well as to create robust monetisation channels.
The Indian agricultural ecosystem, while being the largest in the world, is plagued by significant information asymmetry, lack of awareness regarding farming/dairy techniques, poor market linkage in crops and dairy, and limited options to buy farm input and equipment due to inadequate discovery through offline retail networks. Krishify’s vision is to solve these gaps by building a content-centric, trusted platform that acts as a one-stop solution to help improve business prospects of its customers.
Krishify was founded in 2019 by three IIT graduates Rajesh Ranjan, Manish Agarwal, and Avinash Kumar as a networking platform for farmers and other agri professionals. It enables information exchange and matches potential buyers and sellers. It also gives access to a large repository of accurate information in local languages. The platform deploys user profiling and AI algorithms to deliver a high degree of personalisation. It can provide services like suggestions and feedback on crop status, and buying and selling of cattle, used tractors/machinery and seeds. Farmers access the community to get trustworthy content on farming techniques, updated market rates, government benefits and subsidies, among other information. Agri-stakeholders like retailers, cattle traders, breeders, and mandi traders use Krishify to discover and interact with a wide community of farmers.
On the occasion, Rajesh Ranjan, Founder and CEO, Krishify said, “The founding team’s strong blend of technological skills and rural-connect has helped us build a robust farmer-centric product which reflects in our immense growth. The Krishify mobile platform has witnessed the highest growth, retention, and engagement in this space. The opportunity ahead of us is enormous. We are delighted to have the backing of investors with deep backgrounds in agritech and community-commerce space; we feel that this fundraise will help us take the venture to new heights.”
“We are targeting to onboard at least 100 million users and unlock a GMV potential of over US$10 billion in the next four years. This will be a new era in the networking platforms context, and we believe that a purpose-driven network like Krishify built around transactional use cases will dominate. In the next 12 to 18 months, we are eyeing over 10 million weekly active users,” Rajesh further added.
“While the Indian agri-tech space has seen a lot of activity over the last few years, most of these investments and initiatives have been crop centric, leaving the other needs of the farmer entirely unsatisfied i.e., dairy, livestock, tractors, machinery, and implements. Within a short span, Krishify has managed to build a highly engaged farmer-centric community solving for the information asymmetry that is widely prevalent in the Indian agricultural ecosystem, to provide farmers a one-stop solution for all their agricultural needs. They are now well-positioned to venture into commerce and increase value realization for farmers by enabling better access to markets and aggregation opportunities, and innovative use of data. Omidyar Network India’s vision of investing in bold entrepreneurs solving for the Next Half Billion (NHB) aligns squarely with Krishify’s mission and we are excited to partner them in their journey,” said Madhav Tandan, Director, Omidyar Network India.
Ritu Verma, Managing Partner, Ankur Capital commented, “We have been investing in Agtech’s for nearly a decade and seen the emergence of farmer communities on social networks. We think this is the ideal time to build a platform that actually focuses on farmers and their needs. We were super excited by the traction and engagement that Krishify was driving and are looking forward to the journey of building India’s largest farmer community with an amazing team. Networking coupled with commerce features offers the potential for a massive scale for this ecosystem.”
Rehan Yar Khan, Managing Partner, Orios Venture Partners said, “We are kicked about what technology can do for Agriculture in India. Krishify is a great example of that, by firstly allowing information exchange between farmers and then allowing them to trade with each other. We have been watching the dazzling adoption in awe and look forward to great things to come. Warm welcome to Ankur and Omidyar Network India.”