After graduating from IIT Delhi in 2008 and working in a consulting firm for three years, Shashank Kumar, co-founder and CEO of DeHaat, decided to go back to his roots and do something that could make a difference to the people of his hometown, Chhapra in Bihar, where most are still dependent on agricultural income.
Early Life
His immediate family was not directly involved in farm work, but agriculture remained an abiding passion as he grew up with families whose lives were linked with farm work. Kumar’s parents wanted him to study at one of the best boarding schools in the state. It was not easy to get admission there as the school had 100 vacancies for which more than 12,000 students applied. He, however, made it look easy by not only clearing the test but also receiving a 100% government scholarship. This meant for the next few years he had access to the best infrastructure, career guidance, a disciplined environment and more, but without any financial burden on his parents.
Even at the consulting firm he worked at after IIT, he got a chance to work with a host of marquee food companies, which were essentially the other end of the food chain. “I got exposed to both ends of agriculture, the farmer side as well as the consumer side. That motivated me to start thinking more and more about the agri space.”
The journey
As he delved deeper into the entire chain, Kumar realised that the segment, even though unstructured at present, could be streamlined through digital connectivity. But while the problem statement was clear, there was no clear business model yet. Also, he was only 23 and had no financial backing or a mentor. So, he decided to take time before he jumped in. While working at the consulting firm, he spent his weekends going deeper into the issues.
He would visit various markets to talk to vendors, go to agricultural universities, meet agricultural scientists, farmers and also many tech entrepreneurs to understand the nuances of running a startup. Once Kumar gained confidence in the idea, he quit his job and connected with Shyam Sundar Singh, Amrendra Singh, Adarsh Srivastava and Abhishek Dokania, current co-founders of DeHaat, to join him. They finally took the plunge in early 2012.
The business model, however, was still not clear. But, there was the urge and ambition to solve a massive problem using tech. “We had just a simple thought that if the problem is huge, and when we have 100 million farmers who are facing challenges, we can have a large working model that could solve it. We knew that if it worked, it would be huge,” Kumar says.
After registering the company, they decided to work from the grassroots and opened a centre in Hajipur in Vaishali district of Bihar. They started meeting farmers every day from there and tried many approaches, different technologies to bring efficiency in their lives. A few things worked, and many didn’t. But the good part was that they continued living in the village for the next year and a half. “During this time, we had many eureka moments every day. There
were lots of grief moments too, caused by weather or wild animals or animal deaths,” he says.
Finally, they zeroed in on the idea of a platform that connects farmers to suppliers and buyers, an online marketplace that provides all the agricultural products and services to farmers.
From there on, the founders took small but consistent steps towards growth. They hired more people and in just eight-nine months, around 900 farmers started using the platform. By 2013, they started setting up many more centres.
At present, DeHaat operates in 12 Indian agrarian states with a network of more than 18,000 centres and 503 farmer producer organisations (FPOs), serving more than 13 million farmers. The startup also provides AI-enabled crop advisory to farmers for more than 30 crops in regional languages.
As DeHaat expanded, they needed more capital. The VC ecosystem was not ready then. So, they reached out to Nabard for capital and also got some grants from universities. In June 2014, the agritech startup raised its first funding round, an undisclosed amount of angel investment.
The firm has so far raised $222 million in funding from marquee investors. It is India’s highest-valued agritech startup at `5,690 crore. In FY24,
the Patna-headquartered firm reported a 36% rise in revenue to Rs 2,720 crore. Besides being a B2B (business-to-business) supply chain and market linkage services provider, DeHaat also has a network of more than 18,000 micro-entrepreneurs in rural areas for last-mile delivery and aggregation.
The firm has also launched a consumer brand, DeHaat Honest Farms, in categories such as pulses, rice and spices to sell products directly across modern trade, quick commerce and e-commerce platforms, currently spread across more than 2,000 stores across 120 cities. “We were just sold on a problem statement and devoted our lives to the sector,” Kumar says.