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When former Microsoft executive Ruchit Garg moved back to India from the US, he found three acute problems in the agriculture ecosystem of his home country – lack of access to the market, unavailability of quality and affordable inputs, and lack of personalised financial products for farmers. Consequently, he started agritech startup Harvesting in 2016 to change the way farmers operate in India.

Six years into its launch, the Chandigarh-based startup has raised its first institutional round of $4 Mn from Silicon Valley-based Social Capital and angels Peggy Dulany Rockefeller and Elliott Donnelly.

Garg’s seed-to-market startup plans to use the funds to grow its user base to 5 Mn by FY23. Harvesting also plans to hire for critical roles, taking its total employee count to 50 by year-end, and make its offline centres, called Kisan Centres or Seva Kendras, available in every state in India.

Harvesting began its operations to connect farmers with financial institutions using its credit risk solution. In 2020, amid the pandemic-induced lockdown and the need for agriculture’s digitisation, Harvesting pivoted to a co-operative society-styled agritech standard and launched a networking model.

Here’s how the startup works now.

Through WhatsApp groups, farmers’ events and a toll-free number, Harvesting asks farmers to join its farming community. Within a designated geographical area, Harvesting appoints a ‘progressive’ farmer as ‘Sarathi’, Garg told Inc42.

The Sarathi leads small communities of 500-600 farmers via digital means such as WhatsApp groups or the offline centres. The community of farmers can take their problems of agri input/output and financial needs to the Sarathi, who in turn connects them with Harvesting’s agronomists.

For instance, if a farmer wants agri inputs such as seeds or financial products such as a tractor loan, he/she can go to the designated Sarathi, who uses the Harvesting Android app and gets the input/loan to the farmer. As for the availability of the product, Harvesting partners with agri input companies who provide heavily discounted products to the agritech startup.

Harvesting transfers the benefit of the discounted products to the farmers for a small commission. For the financial products, the company charges a fee from the lending bank. However, Garg did not disclose the name of the bank with which Harvesting has a tie up.

A ‘Swades’ Moment Within India’s Agritech

Over 56% of India’s workforce is dependent on agriculture and allied activities for livelihood, producing over $275 Bn worth of crops annually. India has over 120 Mn small farmers, but their collective bargaining power is next to negligible.

Garg decided to return to his roots after selling his previous enterprise tech startup 9SLIDES to US-based Limeade. His middle-class roots and his experience in the startup ecosystem formed the background for starting Harvesting – a move akin to that of the protagonist in the movie Swades.

As of August 2022, over 3.7 Mn farmers are connected to the startup’s farmers’ community, Harvesting Farmer Network (HFN). Harvesting claims to have increased its farmers’ crop earnings by up to 2.5X due to HFN’s supply chain network and the 25+ Seva Kendras. It has over 5K Sarathis leading the network in Bihar, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and north-eastern states such as Nagaland.

The app works for 60+ crop varieties, offers 8+ language support and a few loan products and is driving data-rich farmer co-operatives, Garg told Inc42. It allows farmers to negotiate better rates for farm inputs and label fair prices for their outputs.

Farmers can buy farm inputs such as seeds, pesticides and fertilisers, access financial services such as loans and insurance as well as sell their crops to national and international customers.

The startup claims that these are luxuries typically available to large farmers, but it is making them available to small farmers who typically have less than two hectares of land. So far, Harvesting has listed and sold $500 Mn worth of crops of 360 varieties in domestic as well as international markets.

With the fundraise, Harvesting plans to expand its footprint across India and open at least one Seva Kendra in each of the 700+ districts in the country, bringing over 5 Mn farmers in its network by the year-end.

Harvesting competes with the likes of Dehaat, Ninjacart, and Hesa in the Indian agritech market worth $25 Bn.