Brief: Sofina Ventures & Temasek lead $60m round for ag marketplace DeHaat

Disclosure: AFN’s parent company, AgFunder, is an investor in DeHaat.

• DeHaat, an ag marketplace for farmers based in India, has raised $60 million in Series E funding.
• Sofina Ventures and Temasek co-led the round with participation from existing backers RTP Global Partners, Prosus Ventures and Lightrock India.
• DeHaat plans to break even in the next 12 months.
• This Series E round puts DeHaat’s valuation between $700 million and $800 million, according to sources familiar with the matter that spoke to TechCrunch.

Why it matters:

India’s farmers have historically dealt with fragmented supply chains that make it difficult to access inputs, buyers, financing and other things necessary for survival.

Online agribusiness marketplaces have emerged to connect farmers with such goods and services.

DeHaat is one of the fastest-growing startups in this sector. Its artificial intelligence-based platform is currently available in more than 110,000 villages over 150 districts in India. More than 1.5 million farmers use DeHaat.

The company says it has also onboarded over 2,000 agribusiness institutions, including input manufacturers, banks, exporters and others.

In the near term, DeHaat says it will focus on its existing geographies, with the goal of reaching break even in the next 12 months. From there, it will pursue new markets. 

“DeHaat has seen 60X growth in the last 40 months and it now has laid a foundation for a clear path to profitability,” co-founder and CEO Shashank Kumar said in a statement. “Closing a $60 million round when 70% of the last raise is still left signifies a victorious status of DeHaat as a market leader in agtech. We aim to leverage this status to consolidate our growth towards efficiency and profitability. We aim to break-even in the next 12 months along with 2-2.5X growth on a YoY basis.”

The Agribusiness Marketplaces category led upstream funding in India for fiscal year 2022. Startups in this sector raised $569 million, according to AgFunder’s Indian AgriFoodTech Investment Report 2022.

DeHaat’s $115 million Series D from last year was the top deal from this time period, and India’s largest-ever round for agtech.