B2B agritech startup Vegrow raises $25M in funding from Prosus, others

Bangalore-based business-to-business (B2B) fruits marketplace Vegrow has raised $25 million in a Series B funding round led by Prosus Ventures, along with the participation from Matrix Partners India, Elevation Capital, Lightspeed India, and Ankur Capital.

Founded in 2020 by Praneeth Kumar, Mrudhukar Batchu, Kiran Naik, and Shobhit Jain, Vegrow focuses on matchmaking across demand and supply for fruits, aggregating multiple channels (wholesalers/semi-wholesalers, modern trade, and general trade) in 100 cities on the demand side and 20,000+ farmers on the supply side.

Through its unique community advisory approach, Vegrow digitally engages with farmers across 400+ production pockets and helps them align with market expectations and get better yield, thereby higher income.

It claims to process more than 200 tons of fruits daily and has grown 15x in the last 12 months with industry-leading gross margins of ~20%. The growth has been unlocked on the back of Vegrow’s deep tech and data stack across the value chain.

The startup has built capabilities to harness farmer chatter, estimate farmland produce and measure demand across Tier-I, Tier-II and Tier-III markets.

|At Vegrow, we are focused on value creation for both farmers and customers On the farmers’ side, we ensure a better realization through right matchmaking, fair and transparent business practices, and value chain innovations," says Praneeth Kumar, Co-founder of Vegrow.

According to the company's statement, the raised capital will be used to expand into more demand centers, establishing dominance across supply micro-pockets, and nurturing a world-class talent pool in product, engineering, and other support functions.

“Being a table-top consumption product, fruits are consumed raw, and consumers are highly sensitive to the quality. Vegrow adds value at source and supply chain to ensure and preserve the quality consistently. We are very excited to have Prosus lead this round and all our internals double down their partnership. We aim to grow sustainably and deliver a $5B. outcome within the next 5 years.”, says Shobhit Jain, Co-founder of Vegrow.

Speaking on the investment, Ashutosh Sharma, Head of Investments, India at Prosus Ventures, said, “We have been tracking the agritech space closely through our existing investments in fresh produce and animal protein segments. The fruits industry being historically unorganized, fragmented and inefficient, is poised for similar tech-led disruption."

"Vegrow has catapulted to pole position by serving pan-India demand through its focus on scale and technology. We are excited to back them as they chase the next level of growth in the country," Ashutosh adds.

Elaborating on the tech stack/ innovation, Mrudhukar Batchu, Co-founder of Vegrow, said, “Building systems and capabilities which can scale is the core tech vision at Vegrow. Today, we have a dynamic understanding of customer quality expectations across 100+ markets and a real time view into $500M worth of produce across farmlands."

"Our tech helps in matchmaking by codification of customer quality, building future farm inventory, deskill supply chain and crowdsourcing market intelligence (price, quality and volume). Our system predicts real time demand and pricing across markets for 15+ fruits. Our Fresh OS Velynk ties all of this together to ensure an agile and reliable supply chain," Mrudhukar Batchu adds.

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