Indian agritech startup Arya has raised USD 21 million in a mix of equity and debt in a Series B funding round from a clutch of investors, including Quona Capital, alongside existing investors LGT Lightstone Aspada and Omnivore. Arya provides post-harvest services across the agricultural value chain, including warehousing, warehouse receipt financing, rural storage discovery, collateral management and market linkages.
“Arya is addressing a vastly underserved market of farmers in India, half of whom previously had little access to post-harvest finance.”
Ganesh Rengaswamy, co-founder and Partner at Quona Capital
Arya has been servicing the storage and financing needs of a range of value chain participants since 2013. It has effectively managed agri produce of more than 15 million tonnes over these years in over 18 states of the country. It partners with large national and multinational agribusiness Corporations, Banks, Processors, Traders, Aggregators, FPOs and farmers to service their post-harvest needs.
“Of the food grains worth $130 billion produced by India annually, there are huge losses in primary and secondary markets due to lack of storage, forcing farmers to sell off-cycle for lower returns.”
Prasanna Rao, co-founder and CEO, Arya
The new funding will be used to expand financing to farmers through Arya’s embedded fintech arm, Aryadhan, and to strengthen its digital post-harvest services and market linkages platform a2zgodaam.com
- Aryadhan is the NBFC arm (non-banking financial corporation) of the company which provides credit to farmers, farmer producer organizations, and agriculture produce aggregators who store commodities in Arya’s warehouses.
- a2zgodaam is an effort to democratise the available agri storage infrastructure in the country. India has about 143 million tonnes of constructed storage capacity. Studies suggest that as a country, the storage gap is in excess of 35%.
As part of the investment, Varun Malhotra, principal, Quona Capital, will join the board of Arya.
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