 "Rise of India's agritech defies funding winter")
Agritech startup DeHaat's revenue is likely to grow by over 80 per cent this fiscal to around Rs 2,300 crore on better sales of farm inputs to farmers and trading of agriculture produces in domestic and overseas markets, its CEO Shashank Kumar said.
DeHaat will also hit positive EBIDTA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortisation) by the end of this calendar year, he highlighted.
DeHaat is a technology-based business-to-farmers platform that offers a complete range of agricultural services to farmers.
These include distribution of high-quality agricultural inputs, customised farm advisory, access to financial services and market linkages for selling their produce.
DeHaat has so far raised USD 221 million from investors like Sofina, Lightrock, Prosus Ventures, Sequoia Capital India, Omnivore partners, and FMO.
"Our turnover was around Rs 1,250 crore in the last fiscal. We are seeing significant growth in revenue this financial year and will touch around Rs 2,300 crore," Kumar told PTI in an interview.
Out of the total revenue, he said, around 70 per cent would come from sale of farm produces procured from farmers and the remaining 30 per cent from sale of inputs like seeds and agrochemicals to farmers.
Kumar said the company would also export Rs 60-65 crore worth agri items, mostly fruits and vegetables, in the 2022-23 financial year.
Asked about profitability of the business, he said, "we will become EBIDTA-positive by December 2023."
DeHaat has expanded the network of DeHaa Centres to to more than 11,000, which are run by rural entrepreneurs on franchisee model, from 5,800 at the beginning of this fiscal year.
"The number of DeHaat Centres will reach to 12,500 by end of this month across 12 states," said Kumar.
Further, he said the startup has on-boarded more than 500 Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs), which can avail all the services being provided by the platform.
DeHaat, which is based out of Patna in Bihar and Gurugram in Haryana, was founded by IIT, IIM & NIT alumni Amrendra Singh, Shyam Sundar Singh, Adarsh Srivastav and Shashank Kumar.
It caters to over 18 lakh farmers through DeHaat Centres.
Asked about fund raising, Kumar said there is no plan as of now.
"We already have sufficient amount left from the last two Series D and E rounds of funding," he said.
In November last year, the company had raised USD 60 million in Series E round.
As a platform, DeHaat has onboarded over 2,000 agribusiness institutions, including input manufacturers, FMCG players, banks, insurance partners and bulk output exporters, offering them direct access to farmers to drive efficiency and transparency.
DeHaat is offering AI (artificial intelligence) enabled crop advisory to farmers for more than 30 crops in regional language.
"We do not charge any amount from farmers for advisories. It's free," Kumar said.
(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
