Indonesia’s Eratani closes oversubscribed $3.8m seed round led by TNB Aura

Eratani, an Indonesian provider of farm management solutions, has closed a $3.8 million seed round.

• The round was led by TNB Aura a Singapore-based venture capital firm that backs startups in Southeast Asia.
• AgFunder, Trihill Capital, and B.I.G. Ventures also participated in the oversubscribed round. [Disclosure: AgFunder is AFN’s parent company.]
• The round will help Eratani scale its operations and strengthen its teams operations, fine-tune their farm management programs as well as expand into other areas within Indonesia.
• Apart from the funding, Eratani says it has received government support to further develop Indonesia’s agricultural ecosystem from Startup Studio Indonesia, which is backed by the Indonesian Ministry of Communication and Informatics,  the Agricultural Ministry of Indonesia, and the Indonesian State Logistics Agency (BULOG).

Why it matters

Indonesia’s agricultural sector is dominated by smallholders who account for 93% of farmers, according to the World Bank.

Compared to other sectors in the country, agriculture is the sector with the least access to credit from formal financial institutions. Agricultural productivity is further diminished due to a lack of access to quality inputs, markets, and small and diminishing land holdings.

With a fast-growing population, Indonesia’s agricultural output has to increase, a situation that calls for leveraging tech in the industry.

Enter platforms like Eratani, which claims to be working to digitize farming processes and reduce manual labor. The latter has often come with lower output and efficiency, is more time-consuming, and contributes to more post-harvest losses due to managerial challenges.

Eratani’s mobile platform provides downstream solutions such as agricultural produce distribution and upstream solutions that involve data-driven farm and supply chain management and data-driven agronomic insight for farmers.

The agtech company, launched in 2021 by Andrew Soeherman, Kevin Juan Tanggo Laksono and Angles Gani, also claims to provide agri-financing and agri-inputs, culminating into a one-stop-shop for Indonesia’s farmers.

It claims to have helped farmers increase their incomes by 25%. Further it has served over 10,000 farmers, with over 8,000 hectares under its management and supported the production of over 52,000 tonnes of rice.

It now has its sights on serving 50,000 farmers by the end of 2024.

What they’re saying

“Due to the highly fragmented nature of the agri value chain in the region, TNB Aura believes Eratani’s farmer-centric approach led by a mission-driven team is key to accelerating the transformation of sustainable food security in Indonesia,” Vicknesh R Pillay, Founding Partner of TNB Aura says.