From Seeds to Market
Technologies For Next Agri Revolution
Close to half of India’s population is dependent on agriculture for its livelihood. Add to that, with 157.35 million hectares under cultivation – the second highest in the world – there is enough scope for technology to not only make farmers’ lives easier, but also increase yield and output. DeHaat aims to do just that!
A former player to provide end-to-end agricultural solutions to the Indian farming community, DeHaat is a fully funded start-up with growth rate of 3-4x annually.
Founded by the alumni from IIT Delhi, IIT Kharagpur, IIM Ahmedabad and other top institutes - the start-up is building Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled technologies to revolutionize supply chain and production efficiency in farm sector. The ICT based platform connects small farmers to their various needs – seeds, fertilizers, equipment, crop advisory, financing & market linkage through network of trained micro entrepreneurs.
What is the Problem that DeHaat is trying to solve and How?
Currently DeHaat is focusing on 3 major agri services – Agri Input, Crop advisory & Market linkage of farm produce. Using the DeHaat platform, farmers can benefit in three ways,
- Cost reduction while buying inputs
- Improvement in farm productivity with timely and customized advisory
- Better farm gate prices.
Consequently, farmers experience more than 50% increment in their net income from agriculture.
Reach
DeHaat’s platform will materially improve India’s rural supply chain and deliver meaningful benefits to smallholder farmers. The company is targeting to create network of 1600+ DeHaat micro entrepreneurs to serve 500,000 farmers by March’21. The long-term goal is to bring DeHaat’s services to 5 million farmers by 2024 across India.
DeHaat platform has already listed 3500+ different agricultural inputs from 50+ companies like UPL, IIL, IFFCO, DuPont, Tata, Bayer & Yara. More than 200 institutional buyers of farm produce like corn, wheat, rice, fruits and vegetables are also associated for their agricultural raw material procurement directly from farmers.
The start-up is currently offering end to end agri services to 220,000+ farmers through 520+ last mile service providers in Bihar, UP & Odisha. As on date, the platform is handling 280+ MT daily volume of agri output like corn, wheat, Chilli, Litchi & vegetables while connecting farmers to institutional buyers. At the same time, delivering 4,000 daily orders related to agri input and spending 400,000 minutes every month while advising farmers for sustainable agricultural practices.
DeHaat chose eastern India - Bihar, UP and Odisha - to begin their operations because it is the most fertile belt in India, but poor connectivity in the past has led to the negligence of the small holder farmers. This region also houses the largest proportion of small farmer holdings, of 2 hectares or less.
DeHaat has created phenomenal impact at the grass root level over the past 8 years of operations. The team’s efforts have been duly recognized and felicitated by NASSCOM, Forbes, ET, Niti Aayog and Bill Gates Foundation.
Revenue model
DeHaat’s revenue comes from sales of farm produce to institution & sales of agri inputs to farmers. Farmers are not charged for crop advisory services. 72% of overall revenue comes from the market linkage of farm produce and remaining from agri input linkage.
Funding
DeHaat has raised $16mn equity investment till date and $3 million in venture debt from venture capital firms and DFIs. Investors include Sequoia Capital, Omnivore, FMO, Trifecta Capital and AgFunder (US) -
Working around the challenges
The primary challenge is to gain access to the right data in remote areas. While there are several reports and journals, the information is basic and doesn’t capture farm-level data. The DeHaat team had to collate the data on their own and then had to work extensively to bring farmers and micro entrepreneurs on board.
Initiatives during Covid-19
Agri-startups have the ability to offer tech-enabled solutions to help Indian farm sector to keep food and farm supply chain rolling during and post lockdown phase. DeHaat has been directly selling fruits and vegetables in the radius of 100 km from their sourcing centres. Apartments and housing colonies have emerged as new market for DeHaat which otherwise caters to supermarkets like Big Bazaar, Spencers, besides app based vendors.
For smooth operation of kharif sowing, DeHaat is also offering solutions to optimise the use of agricultural inputs and enable delivery to farmers.