Agritech startup funding: Bengaluru-based agritech company Ergos, on Friday, announced raising $10 million in its Series B funding round in a mix of equity and debt led by the Norwegian fund Abler Nordic and existing investors Aavishkar Capital, Chiratae Ventures and Trifecta Venture Debt Fund.
Ergos works towards digitising grain storage, converting grains into digital assets, and earning money by selling those procured grains at the optimal time post-harvest. The platform further offers a buyer’s platform linking farmers to markets, warehousing for grains, and accessible financing options for farmers through lending partners.
Kishor Jha, Founder and CEO, Ergos said, “Ergos’s comprehensive Grainbank platform enables farmers to make optimal decisions on the sales/storage of their produce, access credit from Banks as well and get access to competitive prices through planned liquidations and access to a wide spectrum of buyers. We are overwhelmed by the immense opportunity ahead of us and we intend to further deepen our presence amongst the farming community even whilst we rapidly scale our operations. ”
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Ergos caters to 1.6 lakh farmers on its platform and has a farm gate-based warehouse network at over 200 locations across Bihar, Maharashtra and Karnataka. The company provides a storage facility for eight to nine months after the harvest. The farmer gets access to up to 70 per cent of the total value of their stored grains.
Arthur Sletteberg, Managing Director of Abler Nordic said, “Ergos is helping solve the problem that many farmers in India increasingly face – produce spoiling due to lack of access to quality storage, affecting both the farmers’ income and general food security. Our investment in Ergos aligns well with Abler Nordic’s vision of contributing to a more inclusive, just and environmentally sustainable society, and we are excited to partner with them on their journey to scale and expand their solutions for the benefit of farmers across the different agri-belts in India.”
Established in 2008, Abler Nordic is a Norwegian Public-Private Partnership (PPP) investing in sustainable financial institutions in Africa and Asia. It manages five funds with total assets of $370 million. It includes investors such as the Danish and the Norwegian government.
According to Invest India, the investment promotion agency of the government, India is among the fifteen leading exporters of agricultural products in the world. As per an Ernst & Young report in September 2020, the market for agritech startups in India is estimated to be $24 billion by 2025.