iFarmer, a full-stack agriculture platform providing agri-based services to farmers, has recently raised $2.1 million (more than Tk 18 crore) in a new financing round, maintaining its accelerated growth.
IDLC Venture Capital Fund, the VC arm of IDLC Finance, led the financing round. Millville Opportunities, a hedge fund firm based in New York, participated in the round. Startup Bangladesh Limited, the flagship venture capital fund of the ICT Ministry, also participated in the financing round, said a media release.
According to the release, Bangladesh has about 16.5m farmers, and almost 80% are smallholders. The biggest challenges for farmers in Bangladesh are securing finance and good quality Agricultural inputs such as seeds, pesticides, fertilizers, etc., and then finding buyers to sell their produce.
iFarmer, which started its operations in 2019, is the largest agri-tech company in the country, offering solutions to these problems at scale. iFarmer facilitates retail and institutional funders to finance the farmers and enables access to high-quality agri-inputs through a partnership with companies and retailers. This, in turn, creates better market access for the farmers by aggregating products from the farmers and selling those to institutional buyers, retailers, and the wholesale markets.
“We are currently operating in 19 districts in Bangladesh – serving close to 63,000 more farmers, up from about 6,000 farmers in 2020”, says Fahad Ifaz, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, iFarmer.
Jamil M Akbar, Co-Founder, and COO, iFarmer, said, “When we started supplying farm produce in June 2020, our monthly volume was around 50+ tons. Now it’s almost 8000+ tons. Every day, we aggregate produce from farmers and supply it to the market.”
“The IDLC Venture Capital Fund I aim to finance promising new businesses which are solving fundamental problems for Bangladesh. We are excited that iFarmer is unlocking the true potential of the agriculture sector through technology at scale. It is using innovation to enable farmers all across Bangladesh, and we believe they are solving the most crucial problems in the industry’s supply chain”, said Mustafizur Khan, Partner, IDLC VC 1.
Alejandro Montealegre, the Managing Partner of Millville Opportunities, said, “iFarmer has proven that it can significantly improve the lives of farmers while bringing efficiency to the agri supply chain. We are excited to back iFarmer as they are working to transform the agriculture sector that is critical to the economy of Bangladesh.”
Source: United News of Bangladesh