Introduction
Farmers in India receive financial and post-harvest services through Arya, a firm that recently raised $21 million in Series A funding. The round was co-led by Intel Capital and existing investor IDG Ventures India. Other investors included Columbia Ventures Corporation, Accion Venture Lab and Omidyar Network India.
Arya is a technology-enabled agri finance & market linkages platform that connects farmers to banks and other financial institutions and agri-focussed market linkages to assist them in accessing better credit facilities and open up market opportunities for their produce. It aims to provide the farmers with access to risk mitigate credit, information about the best quality crop inputs; solutions for production optimization techniques; and access opportunities for trading agricultural produce.
Arya will use the funds to grow its presence in India by enhancing its technology platform, expanding its network of quality suppliers providing agricultural inputs, co-investing in projects that directly benefit farmers, increasing farmer engagement on their platform, bringing on board new partners & financial outreach centres and exploring strategic options of enabling access Solutions at large scale.
Background
Arya is a credit and agritech startup that provides financial and supply chain services to farmers in India. Founded in 2015, Arya enables farmers to access finance, improve their market access, and get better yielding harvests. Recently, it has raised $21 million in a Series B round to expand its services in India.
In this article, we’ll discuss Arya’s background and its services’ importance.
Overview of Arya
Arya is a tech-enabled agri-financing company that strives to provide financial services and post-harvest support to farmers in India. Founded in 2018, the company’s mission is to make credit easier, faster and fairer for smallholder farming communities. Arya uses an asynchronous communications layer between traditional banking systems and a digital agri-finance platform to instantly assess borrowings and disburse loans close to their point of need. They also offer post-harvest lending specifically designed for smallholders and supplier finance solutions.
Arya operates on four key pillars:
1) Partnering with financial institutions;
2) Leveraging mobile technology for loan processing;
3) Building data analytics models for finetuning credit underwriting;
4) Creating direct relationships with rural farmers through agents to better understand their needs. With this approach, the company has reached out to many more smallholder farmers than traditional banks usually do due to its innovative structured finance products being tailored around each farmers’ specific credit desires.
The funds raised by Arya will be used towards further expanding its operations in India. This announcement reflects the growing trend among investors looking towards emerging markets such as India as an increasingly attractive investment opportunity in FinTech.
Problems faced by Indian farmers
Indian farmers are often faced with numerous problems in their daily lives. The agricultural sector faces various challenges due to natural causes and the lack of modern technology and advancements. These challenges include limited access to credit, inadequate post-harvest services, inefficient supply chain management, untrained labor inputs and scarce resources for financing and equipment.
In addition, inconsistent weather conditions lead to high crop uncertainty and reduce crop yields, resulting in economic losses for the farmers. Also, input prices tend to be higher than output prices as market power lies largely with wholesalers or retailers rather than the farmers.
These obstacles limit agricultural productivity at a large scale, leading to low yields and poor quality produce. Moreover, low bargaining power of the farmers due to limited access to financial capital and inadequate knowledge on how best to market their products further exacerbates the situation. Therefore, Indian farmers find it difficult not only during production but also in marketing their produce profitably.
Arya raises $21M to provide farmers in India finance and post-harvest services
Arya provides farmers in India with access to finance and post-harvest services. The company recently raised a $21M Series A round of funding to expand its services and reach more farmers. This funding will allow Arya to provide more comprehensive services to farmers, offering them access to finance and post-harvest services such as storage, transportation and marketing.
Let’s look into what this means in more detail.
Overview of the $21M investment
Arya, the Indian agritech startup that provides farmers in India financial services, has raised $21M from private equity firm Aspada and early-stage venture investors Shunwei Capital, Elevar Equity and FMO.
The new fundraising will help Arya to expand its existing services and grow its geographical reach. Currently, the company operates in more than 400 villages across seven major states in India. It also leverages digital data about farm economics and livestock farming processes to create efficient systems for managing price fluctuations and market developments.
The fund of $21 million will be the largest Series A round completed by an agtech startup in India till date. Part of this investment is expected to finance Arya’s expansion into other regions of India not serviced currently and provide more comprehensive post-harvest services. The additional capital will also support further development of AI/ML technology built into their model predicting customer behaviours, loan performance analysis & forecasting crop prices.
Arya’s goal is to become a one-stop shop for all farming needs, helping it get closer to achieving core mission – improving farmers’ everyday lives through digitization. This funding signifies investors’ growing confidence in Arya’s mission, approach and consumer experience – which will be the future path for making substantial progress towards agricultural development in India.
Services provided by Arya
Arya is a venture-backed business that provides farmers in India with a suite of financial and post-harvest services. By utilizing artificial intelligence and satellite technology, Arya aims to reduce risk, increase revenue and improve access to capital for rural Indian farmers. The company just raised $21 million in Series A financing led by Sequoia India and Omidyar Network India with participation from Nexus Venture Partners, Endiya Partners, Pi Ventures and other investors.
Farmers can access affordable credit through the Arya platform at more than double the speed of traditional lending institutions. They can also purchase insurance coverage for crop loss from bad weather or pest infestations. Additionally, Arya enables farmers to track harvest indices using satellite imagery to identify crop productivity patterns on their farms, helping them make informed decisions about planting cycles and inputs needed for higher yields.
Finally, Arya offers post-harvest services such as warehousing, value chain creation and quality certification which gives farmers better control over pricing once their crops are ready for sale. By providing all these services under one roof at an affordable cost to rural farmers in India who are currently underserved by traditional banking services or lack the technical expertise needed to use current technologies available in the market today such as satellite mapping or analysis data captured through AI algorithms on ground level activities across different districts or farms, Arya has created a much needed scalable solution that helps overcome some of the major challenges faced by rural farming community across India.
Benefits
Arya’s raised funds will enable them to scale their agri-tech operations and make it easier for farmers in India to access finance and post-harvest services. In addition, the raised funds will help Arya transform the way farmers manage their operations, including access to market information, better supply chain systems, and digital payment solutions.
This article will discuss the main benefits of Arya’s raised funds for farmers.
Benefits to farmers
The newly-raised capital will help Arya to expand its technology and reach to provide more financial and post-harvest services to farmers in India. With Arya’s support, smallholder farmers can access affordable loans, livelihood insurance, and technology-driven market linkages. This can potentially open up new income generation paths and increased farmers’ profits.
Providing financial capital and market linkages creates access for marginalised smallholder farmers, who have been disproportionally affected by the Covid pandemic. The financing they receive can help them purchase seeds, fertilisers or even gear them up with digital tools such as mobile phones or other IT support. In addition to helping fund tangible necessities like these, the service also provides post-harvest assistance such as training—training that teaches sustainable farming techniques that allow long-term yields and promoting best practices in organic farming if needed. Plus, Arya’s platform connects these farmers directly to buyers with whom they can sell their produce or create trade relationships over the long term– thus eliminating intermediaries from which large companies typically take a large portion of profits.
Overall this raises the incomes of smallholder farmers drastically. Across India there is an estimated 24 million smallholders; this venture could eventually provide them with a valuable opportunity for profitability which will trickle down through multiple generations of families providing life changing opportunity in perpetuity!
Benefits to investors
The new funding enables Arya to pursue its vision of providing innovative digital farming and financial solutions to more than half a million smallholder farmers in India. This investment also allows investors to gain exposure and support a fintech challenger in the agritech space.
Arya’s platform is designed to help smallholder farmers access finance for agriculture needs, give them better market access and get post-harvest services like storage, sorting and transportation. Investors will benefit from their investment with the potential growth of a platform that will assist farmers in meeting their needs. The platform provides improved agricultural outcomes for farmers by connecting them directly with buyers, who could be other stakeholders such as companies, farmer producer organisations or banks.
In addition, investors are looking ahead to the long-term potential of utilizing data obtained from the company’s existing operations and using technology such as machine learning, artificial intelligence or natural language processing embedded into Arya’s proprietary software applications offered on its platform. By taking an investor stance in Arya’s business model, investors are helping bring disruption in agritech sector while benefiting financially such as appreciation of share value, dividends or returns based on performance of business operations & investments made by the company into various areas of operation within its business model.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Arya’s innovative platform gives Indian farmers access to finance and post-harvest services, enabling them to create greater economic opportunity for themselves and their families. The company’s latest $21M round of funding will help the organization continue its mission by expanding its capabilities and reach.
This influx of capital will also provide valuable resources that can fuel the continuing development of the platform and introducing it to more smallholder farms in India. Ultimately, this injection of capital should provide a much needed boost to farmers in some of India’s most underdeveloped areas, helping them move up the value chain and ultimately build for a brighter future for all involved.
tags = Arya, raises $21M, farmers, India finance, India, post-harvest services, indiabased south asia 46m 14msinghtechcrunch, Noida-based startup, Quona Capital
