[Funding alert] Agritech startup BharatRohan raises seed funding

BharatRohan Airborne Innovations, agritech startup, has raised Seed funding in a round from Upaya Social Ventures and Acumen Fund Inc.

The company will use the funds to strengthen its foothold across Rajasthan and Gujarat states, growing in Agritech sector and scale its traceable, sustainable, and profitable ecosystem of seed spices, oilseeds, and pulses across around 2 lakh acres of area in the next two years.

 “BharatRohan is committed to making farming profitable so that it appeals to the new generation of growers while ensuring that the consumers get access to safe food with knowledge about how and where it is grown. We are actively looking for institutional buyers who hold these similar values wish to enter into long-term backward linkage programs. This fundraising is going to help us scale and reach out to such like-minded institutions and partners.” said, Amandeep, Co-Founder of BharatRohan.

The company said that the investment will help build the capability to sell close to 7,000 metric tonnes of seed spices like carom, cumin, fenugreek, coriander, and fennel to different institutional buyers.

Lucknow-based startup founded in 2015 by Amandeep Panwar & Rishabh Choudhary, BharatRohan is a technology-enabled end-to-end decision support system designed to optimize input utilization, minimize crop losses and maximize profit margins for farmers by facilitating crop advisory services with its UAV/drone-based hyperspectral imagery system.

“India is making rapid technological advancements in the usage of drones, and BharatRohan has been pioneering the applications of drones in agriculture.we are excited by the team’s expertise in providing drone-based crop advisory and market linkage to smallholder farmers. This would help farmers engage in precision farming and boost their income.” said AB Chakravarthy, India Country Director at Upaya.

The company has partnered with farmers, agri-input companies, NGOs, FPOs and FMCG giants to collect and distribute agricultural products and services.

“Acumen believes in the vision of the founders to enable farmers to access high tech drone technology for making informed decisions in the farms. The data from the drones helps farmers to minimize crop losses and pesticide usage.” said, Mahesh Yagnaraman, Country Director Acumen.

The company provides drone-based advisory services to about 6,000 farmers across 20,000 acres in states like Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. Of which about 20 per cent buy agri-inputs from the company. This relationship enables the company to implement sustainable farming practices and track every agricultural activity on the ground.