Mirae Asset Venture, Unitary Fund, Cephalopod Teknik Fund, GMO, Yara Growth Ventures and DG Lab Fund also participated in the fundraising round
Blume Ventures invested INR 31.20 Cr while Mirae Asset Venture and Unitary Fund put INR 23.7 Cr and INR 19.5 Cr into the startup
With the current fundraising, Jai Kisan has secured over $53.4 Mn in aggregate till date
Rural fintech startup Jai Kisan has raised INR 142 Cr ($18 Mn) in its ongoing Series B funding round led by Blume Ventures.
Mirae Asset Venture, Unitary Fund, Cephalopod Teknik Fund, GMO, Yara Growth Ventures and DG Lab Fund also participated in the fundraising round.
In a special resolution, the board of Jai Kisan allotted 5,266 compulsory cumulative preference shares (CCPS) at a price of Rs 2,70,133 apiece to raise $18 Mn.
Blume Ventures invested INR 31.20 Cr while Mirae Asset Venture and Unitary Fund put INR 23.7 Cr and INR 19.5 Cr into the startup. Meanwhile, other investors together infused INR 56.19 Cr in the funding round.
With the current fundraising, Jai Kisan has secured over $53.4 Mn in aggregate till date.
Founded in 2020 by Arjun Ahluwalia and Adriel Maniego, Jai Kisan is a rural India-focussed neo bank that offers credit solutions in online and offline rural commerce environments. It partners with equipment dealers, agriculture retailers, and market linkage platforms to provide credit to farmers working in agriculture and other allied sectors.
In April 2020, Jai Kisan launched a digital lender for rural businesses called Bharat Khata. Through Bharat Khata, the startup is said to have made over $380 Mn of the annualised gross transactions up to March 2021. It also claimed that it backed 15 % of the above-cited transactions to make an annual loan disbursal of INR 432 Cr in the financial year 2020-21.
Its cap table includes Mirae Asset, Syngenta Ventures, Arkam Ventures, NABVENTURES, Prophetic Ventures, Better Capital, Blacksoil, Stride Ventures, Trifecta Capital, Astarc Ventures, Harshbeena Zaveri from NRB Bearings and Sanjay Mariwala from OmniActive, among others.
Besides Jai Kisan, some other rural-focussed startups such as Hesa, SarvaGram and 1Bridge are also working in the space.
According to a Bain & Company report, India’s rural economy employed 350 Mn people between 2019-20. Agriculture is a significant sub-sector of the rural economy, contributing roughly 37% of total rural GDP between 2019 and 2020.
A host of startups including Boonbox, eSamudaay and Rozana have been also operating in this space.
The development was first reported by Entrackr.
