Vegrow raises $25M in Series B funding led by Prosus Ventures
Vegrow, India’s leading B2B marketplace for fruits announced they have secured funding of $25M Series B round led by Prosus Ventures. Marquee investors Matrix Partners India, Elevation Capital, Lightspeed India and Ankur Capital also participated in the round. Prominent angel and agri veteran Sanjiv Rangrass continues to back the company.
Vegrow focuses on matchmaking across demand and supply for fruits, aggregating multiple channels (wholesalers/semi-wholesalers, modern trade and general trade) in 100 cities on the demand side and 20,000+ farmers on the supply side. Through its unique community advisory approach, Vegrow digitally engages with farmers across 400+ production pockets and helps them align with market expectations and get better yield, thereby higher income. It processes more than 200 tons of fruits daily. Vegrow has grown 15x in the last 12 months with industry-leading gross margins of ~20%. The growth has been unlocked on the back of Vegrow’s deep tech and data stack across the value chain. It has built capabilities to harness farmer chatter, estimate farmland produce and measure demand across Tier-I, Tier-II, and Tier-III markets.
India’s fruit market is valued at $60Bn where every fruit is a multi-billion-dollar opportunity. Within this, Vegrow is already the leader in ‘Pomegranate’ and amongst the top 5 in several other fruit categories within a short span of 2 years. The funds will primarily be used for expansion into more demand centers, establishing dominance across supply micro-pockets, and nurturing a world-class talent pool in product, engineering and other support function domains.
“Being a table-top consumption product, fruits are consumed raw, and consumers are highly sensitive to the quality. Vegrow adds value at source and supply chain to ensure and preserve the quality consistently. We are very excited to have Prosus lead this round and all our internals double down their partnership. We aim to grow sustainably and deliver a $5 Bn. outcome within the next 5 years.”, said Shobhit Jain, co-founder Vegrow.
Praneeth Kumar, co-founder Vegrow added — “At Vegrow, we are focused on value creation for both farmers and customers. On the famers’ side, we ensure a better realization through the right matchmaking, fair and transparent business practices, and value chain innovations.
Ashutosh Sharma, Head of Investments, India at Prosus Ventures, shared, “We have been tracking the agritech space closely through our existing investments in fresh produce and animal protein segments. The fruits industry, being historically unorganized, fragmented and inefficient, is poised for similar tech-led disruption. Vegrow has catapulted to pole position by serving pan-India demand through its focus on scale and technology. We are excited to back them as they chase the next level of growth in the country.”
Elaborating on the tech stack/ innovation, Mrudhukar Batchu, co-founder, Vegrow shared, “Building systems and capabilities which can scale is the core tech vision at Vegrow. Today, we have a dynamic understanding of customer quality expectations across 100+ markets and a real-time view of $500 MM worth of produce across farmlands. Our tech helps in matchmaking by the codification of customer quality, building future farm inventory, deskill supply chain, and crowdsourcing market intelligence (price, quality, and volume). Our system predicts real-time demand and pricing across markets for 15+ fruits. Our Fresh OS Velynk ties all of this together to ensure an agile and reliable supply chain.”
“We’re thrilled to be doubling down on our investment in Vegrow as they scale and reshape the Agritech landscape in India. We’re privileged to have been the first to partner with Shobhit, Praneeth, Kiran & Mrudhukar on this journey and welcome Prosus to the partnership!” Commented Sudipto Sannigrahi, Principal, Matrix India.
“In the past year, Vegrow team has made significant headway in solving a core problem in the perishables supply chain — matching of supply & demand. This allows Vegrow to buy supplies from a wide variety of sources, across grades and have a very strong handle on pricing. This ensures a very high Supply-side NPS. Fruit farmers across their footprint are keen to work with Vegrow. This has allowed Vegrow to build a strong supply side moat and grow over 15x in the last 12 months. Super excited to double down on our partnership” said Akarsh Shrivastava, Principal, Elevation Capital. “I am amazed to see Vegrow’s customer love through quality and consistency. They are well poised to be a leading B2B brand in India and internationally!” commented Vaibhav Agarwal, Partner, Lightspeed.
“It’s exciting to see Vegrow’s growth and external validation of what they do through this round. In complex supply chains there are so many issues that keep rearing their ugly heads and Vegrow’s approach shows that a systematic technology led approach is capable of unlocking profit pools consistently and addressing the challenges that perishable fruit supply chains face”, commented Ritu Verma, Partner, Ankur Capital
About Ankur Capital:
Ankur Capital is an early-stage venture capital fund investing in digital and deep science technology companies. Established in 2014, Ankur Capital looks to uncover and unlock opportunities in overlooked markets across India. They were the first institutional investors in notable companies including Captain Fresh (supply chain platform for animal proteins); Cropin (SaaS-based suite putting farms on the cloud); Rupifi (B2B BNPL platform powering MSME growth); String Bio (synthetic biology platform converting methane into alternative proteins); and Vegrow (smart matchmaking platform for fruits). From seed to scale, Ankur Capital currently has 25 companies in its portfolio across two funds.
About Vegrow:
Vegrow was founded in 2020 by IIT alumni Praneeth Kumar, Mrudhukar Batchu, Kiran Naik and Shobhit Jain, who have deep agri expertise and hyper-growth marketplace exposure owing to their past experiences at ITC, Urban Company & Chronus. This combination of deep agri value chain knowledge, product & tech thinking, and the passion for a very large scale impact makes for a powerful driving force in the sector. Through their deep data-tech stack the company focuses on matchmaking across demand and supply and value chain innovation.
About Prosus:
Prosus is a global consumer internet group and one of the largest technology investors in the world. Operating and investing globally in markets with long-term growth potential, Prosus builds leading consumer internet companies that empower people and enrich communities. The group is focused on building meaningful businesses in the online classifieds, food delivery, payments and fintech, and education technology sectors. Through the Prosus Ventures team, the group invests in new technology growth opportunities within logistics, fintech, health, blockchain, social and ecommerce platforms, agriculture and more. The team actively backs exceptional entrepreneurs who are using technology to improve people’s everyday lives. Each month, more than 2 billion customers across the globe use the products and services of companies that Prosus has invested in, acquired or built. To find out more, please visit www.prosus.com.
