What is Unnati?
The tech-driven platform was found in 2015 by Amit Sinha, Paytm’s former CFO, and completed his education from IIM Calcutta, and Ashok Prasad, who previously worked with Tata Teleservices and Paytm.
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The platform was designed to build and set up better market access to the farmers.
This platform provides financial services to the farmers and apart from that, it helps them in the purchase farm advisories.
In 2017, the start-up provided essential inputs to help the customers receive better prices in return for their produce which belonged to a fair and transparent transaction or manners in the market.
“At Unnati, our overarching goal is to authorize the country’s farmers and bring the best technologies to enhance the productivity. Since we cater to a multitude of farming needs, the current capital injection will allow us to expand our value proposition in the terms of innovative digital tools that we offer” said Ashok Prasad.
How did they help farmers during the pandemic? How did the farm bill affect them?
During the lockdown, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, around 118.7 Million farmers lost their primary source of income.
Unnati, a new age fintech company, offered the farmers a helping hand by converting them into entrepreneurs, which can be named Farmeneurs.
The company provided them with various farming services like purchasing the right seed, pesticides for crops, and selling them.
With the release of the farm bill, various segments like transparency, mandis would no longer an option to the farmers.
These startups will have to provide more values as an alternative source.
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Unnati Raises $.17 Million In Pre-Series A
Noida based agriculture technology start-up, Unnati, has raised $1.7 Million in pre-series A funding round from the Nabventures fund.
The funding has led the tech platform to scale up and introduce digital technologies to the farmers of India.
The Agri-tech startup enabled the farmers to have an access to better markets with transparency.
The startup is raising the funds to build more partners for selling and purchasing the produce in various parts of India.
They are looking forward to invest their funds to increase their geographical locations and the crop footprint.
Supported by Sumit Saraf, an advisor on the transaction, the platform has raised funds from various angel investors including Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Paytm founder and CEO, KRS Jamwal, former senior executives of Paytm- Vikas Garg, ShankarNath, RenuSatti; Gemba Capital, and Ajay Lakhotia.
Nabventures COO Manikumar S said “Unnatiteam is solving some of the important problems faced by farmers like lack of access to quality inputs at transparent prices and lack of last-mile market linkage to sell produce at competitive prices. The amalgamation of a fintech layer has resulted in customer stickiness. We appreciate the Agri input selling and market linkage proposition of the Unnati platform and are happy to support it on its onwards and upwards journey”.
The tech-driven start-up, in 2019, raised a fund of $244.59 Million.
The government has also taken an initiative after noticing the segment to invest nearly INR 36.71 Crore in around 346 Agritech startup.
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