ImpactAlpha, April 7 – Gurgaon-based DeHaat’s online marketplace connects India’s smallholder farmers to buyers, and to farming equipment, inputs and financing. It serves more than 200,000 farmers in the rural and poor states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, as well as Jharkhand and Odisha.
Sequoia India led the company’s $12 million Series A round, backed by Dutch development bank FMO and existing investors Omnivore and AgFunder.
Services like DeHaat are all the more crucial when markets aren’t functioning normally, Omnivore’s Mark Kahn told ImpactAlpha. “Farmers in rural India are in a difficult position,” without knowing which buyers are active and which have shut down. He added: “DeHaat is addressing information asymmetry that farmers couldn’t on their own.”
