Arya, a Noida-based post-harvest agritech and agri-fintech startup, on Monday announced the close of its Series B round, having raised $21 million in a mix of equity and debt.
The equity round was led by Quona Capital, a venture firm focused on fintech in emerging markets, alongside existing investors LGT Lightstone Aspada and Omnivore. Multiple lenders also participated in providing additional debt financing to the company.
As part of the investment, Varun Malhotra, Principal at Quona Capital, will join the Board of Arya.
In a statement, the startup said the new funding will be used to expand financing to farmers through Arya’s embedded fintech arm, Aryadhan, and to strengthen its digital post-harvest services and market linkages platform, A2Z Godaam.
Building on its market leadership in agricultural warehousing services, Arya has expanded to become a full-service provider of digital solutions for storage, processing, financing, and market linkages. The startup’s clients include farmers, farmer producer organisations (FPOs), financial institutions, SME agri processors, commodity traders and corporate agribusinesses.
Through its profitable business model with over 2.5 million tonnes of storage capacity across 1,500 warehouses in 20 Indian states, Arya said it helps farmers realise better value for their produce through village level commodity storage, integrated financing, and market linkage services to create better options for commodity sales. It efficiently connects the supply side of the agro-ecosystem with the demand side.
Arya’s NBFC subsidiary, Aryadhan Financial Solutions assists sellers of agri-commodities to avoid distress sale of produce by extending post-harvest credit. It has completed loan disbursements of over Rs 250 crore.
“Of the food grains worth $130 billion produced by India annually, there are huge losses in primary and secondary markets due to lack of storage, forcing farmers to sell off-cycle for lower returns,” said Arya’s Co-Founder and CEO, Prasanna Rao.
“These same farmers are dependent on financing for their cash flow needs but are vastly underserved, hurting their ability to store and sell their produce optimally. Arya’s digital solution pairs warehousing with financing and critical market linkage services to help smallholder farmers thrive,” he added
The founders of Arya — Chattanathan Devarajan, Prasanna Rao, and Anand Chandra — pioneered the warehouse receipt financing business in India, and were responsible for the agri-finance playbook at ICICI Bank.
“Arya is addressing a vastly underserved market of farmers in India, half of whom previously had little access to post-harvest finance,” said Ganesh Rengaswamy, Co-founder and Partner at Quona Capital. “We believe Arya’s unique approach, providing a full-service digital platform with embedded finance and differentiated efficiencies for small farmholders, will drive the future of farming in India.”
The investment bank IndigoEdge was the exclusive advisor on the deal.
Edited by Saheli Sen Gupta
Link : https://yourstory.com/2020/12/funding-agritech-startup-arya-series-b-quona-capital
Author :- Sujata Sangwan ( )
December 15, 2020 at 10:52AM
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