Matrix-backed Vegrow raises $25M in Series B funding led by Prosus Ventures
11th July 2022, India: Vegrow, India's leading B2B marketplace for fruits announced they have secured funding of $25M Series B round led by Prosus Ventures. Matrix Partners India, Elevation Capital, Lightspeed India and Ankur Capital also participated in the round. Prominent angel investor Sanjiv Rangrass continues to back the company.
Vegrow focuses on matchmaking across demand and supply for fruits, aggregating multiple channels (wholesalers/semi-wholesalers, modern trade and general trade) in 100 cities on the demand side and 20,000+ farmers on the supply side. Through its unique community advisory approach, Vegrow digitally engages with farmers across 400+ production pockets and helps them align with market expectations and get better yield, thereby higher income. It processes more than 200 tons of fruits daily. Vegrow has grown 15x in the last 12 months with industry leading gross margins of ~20%. The growth has been unlocked on the back of Vegrow's deep tech and data stack across the value chain. It has built capabilities to harness farmer chatter, estimate farmland produce and measure demand across Tier-I, Tier-II and Tier-III markets.
India's fruit market is valued at $60B where every fruit is a multi-billion-dollar opportunity. Within this, Vegrow is already the leader in '˜Pomegranate' and amongst the top 5 in several other fruit categories within a short span of 2 years. The funds will primarily be used for expansion into more demand centers, establishing dominance across supply micro-pockets and nurturing a world-class talent pool in product, engineering and other support function domains.
"Being a table-top consumption product, fruits are consumed raw, and consumers are highly sensitive to the quality. Vegrow adds value at source and supply chain to ensure and preserve the quality consistently. We are very excited to have Prosus lead this round and all our internals double down their partnership. We aim to grow sustainably and deliver a $5B. outcome within the next 5 years.', said Shobhit Jain, Co-founder Vegrow.
Praneeth Kumar, Co-founder Vegrow added - "At Vegrow, we are focused on value creation for both farmers and customers On the farmers' side, we ensure a better realization through right matchmaking, fair and transparent business practices, and value chain innovations.'
Ashutosh Sharma, Head of Investments, India at Prosus Ventures, shared, "We have been tracking the agritech space closely through our existing investments in fresh produce and animal protein segments. The fruits industry being historically unorganized, fragmented and inefficient, is poised for similar tech-led disruption. Vegrow has catapulted to pole position by serving pan-India demand through its focus on scale and technology. We are excited to back them as they chase the next level of growth in the country.'
Elaborating on the tech stack/ innovation, Mrudhukar Batchu, Co-founder, Vegrow, shared, "Building systems and capabilities which can scale is the core tech vision at Vegrow. Today, we have a dynamic understanding of customer quality expectations across 100+ markets and a real time view into $500M worth of produce across farmlands. Our tech helps in matchmaking by codification of customer quality, building future farm inventory, deskill supply chain and crowdsourcing market intelligence (price, quality and volume). Our system predicts real time demand and pricing across markets for 15+ fruits. Our Fresh OS Velynk ties all of this together to ensure an agile and reliable supply chain.'
"We're thrilled to be doubling down on our investment in Vegrow as they scale and reshape the Agritech landscape in India. We're privileged to have been the first to partner with Shobhit, Praneeth, Kiran & Mrudhukar on this journey and welcome Prosus to the partnership!' Commented Sudipto Sannigrahi, Principal, Matrix India.
"In the past year, Vegrow team has made significant headway in solving a core problem in the perishables supply chain '“ matching of supply & demand. This allows Vegrow to buy supply from a wide variety of sources, across grades and have a very strong handle on pricing. This ensures a very high Supply-side NPS. Fruit farmers across their footprint are keen to work with Vegrow. This has allowed Vegrow to build a strong supply side moat and grow over 15x in last 12 months. Super excited to double down on our partnership', said Akarsh Shrivastava, Principal, Elevation Capital. "I am amazed to see Vegrow's customer love through quality and consistency. They are well poised to be a leading B2B brand in India and internationally!' commented Vaibhav Agarwal, Partner, Lightspeed.
"It's exciting to see Vegrow's growth and external validation of what they do through this round. In complex supply chains, there are so many issues that keep rearing their ugly heads and Vegrow's approach shows that a systematic technology-led approach is capable of unlocking profit pools consistently and addressing the challenges that perishable fruit supply chains face', commented Ritu Verma, Partner, Ankur Capital
About Vegrow:
Vegrow was founded in 2020 by IIT alumni Praneeth Kumar, Mrudhukar Batchu, Kiran Naik and Shobhit Jain, who have deep agri expertise and hyper-growth marketplace exposure owing to their past experiences at ITC, Urban Company & Chronus. This combination of deep agri value chain knowledge, product & tech thinking, and the passion for a very large scale impact makes for a powerful driving force in the sector. Through their deep data-tech stack the company focuses on matchmaking across demand and supply and value chain innovation.
About Prosus:
Prosus is a global consumer internet group and one of the largest technology investors in the world. Operating and investing globally in markets with long-term growth potential, Prosus builds leading consumer internet companies that empower people and enrich communities.'¯The group is focused on building meaningful businesses in the online classifieds, food delivery, payments and fintech, and education technology sectors. Through the Prosus Ventures team, the group invests in new technology growth opportunities within logistics, fintech, health, blockchain, social and ecommerce platforms, agriculture and more. The team actively backs exceptional entrepreneurs who are using technology to improve people's everyday lives. Each month, more than 2 billion customers across the globe use the products and services of'¯companies that Prosus'¯has invested in, acquired or built.'¯To find out more, please visit www.prosus.com.
About Matrix Partners India:
Founded in 2006, Matrix India invests in companies targeting the Indian consumer and enterprise market at the seed, early and early growth stages. The firm has invested in several category-leading B2B marketplaces such as OfBusiness (B2B Commerce, fintech), Captain Fresh (B2B seafood & animal protein marketplace), FarMart (SaaS-enabled agri outputs marketplace), LoadShare (tech-enabled logistics network), Bijnis (B2B fashion & footwear marketplace), Sourcewiz (SaaS-enabled B2B exports), and Saveo (B2B marketplace for pharmacies).
Other marquee investments include Ola (mobility), Dailyhunt (mobile local language platform), Razorpay (payments), Five Star Business Finance (SME lending), Ola Electric (electric vehicles), Stanza Living (tech-enabled student housing platform), OneCard (mobile-first credit card), DealShare (social commerce platform), Country Delight (D2C dairy & fresh foods brand), Mswipe (mobile POS), GoKwik (e-commerce enablement platform), Zupee (leading skill-based gaming app) and Oxyzo (a tech-enabled smart financing solution provider) among others. Matrix India has advisory offices in Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai. Matrix Partners has a global network of funds investing in the US, China and India, with approximately $5 billion under management. Further information is available at www.matrixpartners.in. To know more about our investment philosophy & ideologies, check out the #MatrixMoments podcast series.
About Elevation Capital:
Elevation Capital is a leading venture capital firm which provides seed and early stage capital for emerging companies in India. Elevation Capital has been investing in India since 2002 deploying almost $2 billion of capital in over 150 companies. The firm announced its eighth pool of capital of $670 million in April 2022. The firm is led by Co-Managing Partners Ravi Adusumalli and Mukul Arora, along with three Managing Directors Mridul Arora, Deepak Gaur and Mayank Khanduja. The firm has invested in over 150 companies across Consumer Internet, SaaS, Fintech, Consumer Brands, Edtech, Healthtech and Web3/Crypto, and has offices in Bengaluru, Gurgaon and Salt Lake City.
About Lightspeed:
Lightspeed is a multi-stage venture capital firm focused on accelerating disruptive innovations and trends in the Enterprise and Consumer sectors. Since 2000, Lightspeed has backed entrepreneurs and helped build companies of tomorrow, including Snap, Affirm, OYO, Nutanix, Byju's, and Udaan. Lightspeed and its affiliates currently manage more than $10 Bn across the global Lightspeed platform, with investment professionals and advisors in India, Silicon Valley, Israel, China, Southeast Asia and Europe. Visit us at https://lsvp.com
About Ankur Capital:
'‹'‹Ankur Capital (https://www.ankurcapital.com/) is an early stage venture capital fund focused on transformative technologies for the Next Billion Users. Established in 2014, its investment thesis underscores the emerging opportunities created by the growing aspirations and greater digital access of this audience. The following portfolio companies successfully illustrate Ankur Capital's highly differentiated thesis: CropIn (SaaS solutions for farmers, present in 53 countries); String Bio (alternative protein generation from methane); Niramai (AI-powered thermal imaging for breast cancer diagnosis); and Captain Fresh (aggregators of fresh seafood across select states). Considered a pioneer in India's agtech investments, Ankur Capital incubated ThinkAg, the country's first think tank in the agritech space. Its founders are consistently counted amongst India's top AI influencers. With the second fund, Ankur Capital strengthens and deepens its commitment to and investment expertise in agtech and healthtech, and expands its reach through opportunities across fintech, edtech, localisation, and insurtech.
