Agri-Startup Raises $12.5 Mn, Gets Residue-Free Fruits & Veggies Directly From Farmers
Farm-to-consumer Bengaluru startup Deep Rooted has raised $12.5 million in a Series-A funding round led by IvyCap Ventures. With this, they plan to expand their network across South India.
Farm-to-consumer startup Deep Rooted has raised $12.5 million in a Series-A funding round led by IvyCap Ventures. Its existing investors Accel, Omnivore, and Mayfield also participated in the round.
The Bengaluru-based startup was co-founded by Avinash B R, Gururaj Rao, Arvind Murali, and Santhosh Narasipura in 2020.
Their aim is to become “India’s first brand for fruits and vegetables (F&V)”.
The company currently operates in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Chennai, and provides urban consumers with good quality fruits and vegetables directly from farmers. They offer over 200 varieties of fruits and vegetables.
They use traditional methods as well as new-age ones like greenhouse, net-house and open fields. They run the largest number of greenhouses across the country.
Through its greenhouse network, Deep Rooted can deliver a year-round supply of fresh, flavorful, residue-free produce, using a fraction of the water and land compared to conventional farms. Their website states that they save water by 60 per cent using drip irrigation.
Speaking to The Better India, Gururaj Rao says they plan to use this funding to establish their presence across South India.
“We are going to use this funding to scale our business across major cities in the south. We will also augment our technology. We plan to establish ourselves as a pan-India brand for F&V in the next three years. This is towards our goal of being the country’s first brand for F&V,” he says.
The founders initially started an agri-tech startup called Clover Ventures around three years ago, which was supplying F&V to businesses. However, when the pandemic began in 2020, they had to pivot.
“It was then that we launched the brand Deep Rooted, which works as direct-to-consumers instead of businesses. We continue to work with the farmers and supply high-quality products,” Gururaj adds.
Ashish Wadhwani, partner at IvyCap Ventures, said, “F&V as a category is ripe for disruption. Deep Rooted, with its razor-sharp focus on F&V, has already showcased a sustainable and profitable view of the opportunity while delivering value to both the farmers and end consumers. We’re excited to be part of their growth journey.”
Meanwhile, Prashanth Prakash, partner at Accel, added “Consistent high quality and sustained availability are two key factors in this category to win consumer trust, and Deep Rooted Co delivers both with its end-to-end management of the supply chain. They have already built a substantial base of happy consumers and I look forward to seeing them scale this in South India & beyond.”
Edited by Divya Sethu
Sources
‘D2C startup for farm produce Deep Rooted raises $12.5 Mn’ by Gyan Vardhan for Entrackr, Published on 22 September, 2022
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