Fasal, the agritech startup, announced on Friday that it has secured around $12 million (INR 100 crore) in a funding round, with TDK Ventures and British International Investment (BII) taking the lead.
The funding round also saw participation from additional investors such as ITI Growth Opportunities Fund, Navam Capital, and Aureolis Ventures. Existing investors, including 3one4 Capital, Omnivore, Wavemaker Partners, Genting Ventures, and The Yield Labs Asia Pacific, were also actively involved.
Based in Bengaluru, the startup collaborates with horticulture farmers, offering them patented Internet-of-Things (IoT) crop intelligence technology across 75,000 acres of land. This technology is employed in the cultivation of various crops, including grapes, pomegranates, bananas, apples, chili, and cardamom.
Fasal asserts that farmers within its network have achieved significant sustainability milestones, including an 82.8 billion-liter reduction in irrigation water consumption, a decrease in pesticide usage by 127,426 kilograms, a mitigation of 54,965 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions, and improvements in yields and quality of up to 30%.
“With this capital infusion, we plan to expand Fasal’s presence from 75,000 acres to 500,000 acres and enable our technology to deliver more to the farmers by providing them access to sustainable crop inputs, farm-level crop insurance, and working capital at lower interest rates,” said Shailendra Tiwari, Founder, and Chief Executive, Fasal.
Fasal said it has enhanced its capabilities to delve deeper into the supply chain with ‘Fasal Fresh,’ a business-to-business marketplace that facilitates the connection between farmers and consumers through retailers and wholesalers.
Siddharth Mehta, investment director, TDK Ventures, said, “Meeting the horticulture farmers and learning about their core problems convinced me that Fasal’s full-stack approach of combining sensors and technology with the marketplace offers a strong value proposition of improving farmer earnings and a strong sustainable impact.” TDK recently deployed funds into energy-tech startup Exponent Energy.