[Funding alert] Agritech startup Eeki Foods raises $6.5 mn in funding

Kota based Agritech startup Eeki Foods has raised $6.5 million in a Series A funding round from General Catalyst with participation form Avaana Capital and Better Capital.

Other investors including Irving Fain (CEO & Founder of Bowery Farming), Subbu Palaniappan (Director & Head of Amazon Prime India), Srinivas Narayanan (former VP Engg at Facebook), Akhil Gupta, and Amit Kumar Agarwal (Co-founders of NoBroker.com.) also participated in this round.

The startup plans to use the new funds to scale up to hundreds of acres and focus on building team, technology and organizational scale in the coming year.

The startup also said it plans to capture unused and barren land in water-stressed states such as Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharashtra to be used for farming using less water.

Kota-based Eeki Foods was founded in 2018 by IIT-Bombay graduates Abhay Singh and Amit Kumar, It aims to make farming sustainable and climate-proof by using its patent-pending growing chambers that grow nutritious residue-free vegetables at affordable prices.

“We are actively looking to establish partnerships with corporates, high net-worth individuals (HNIs) and other retail farmers in Rajasthan, Delhi-NCR and Maharashtra to build such farms across the country”, said the founders in a joint statement.

The startup claims that its technology enables agriculture to be climate-controlled, allowing vegetables to be grown throughout the year without being affected by seasonal changes. The company’s patent-pending IoT control mechanism has been deployed on farms, making operations cost-effective, and less dependent on manual labor.

“Eeki’s innovative, India-centric growing system as well as its unique business model are making a meaningful difference in the lives and livelihoods of farming partners and consumers”,said, Anand Chandrasekaran, Partner at General Catalyst.

The agritech startup also claims to use 80% less water through this technology as compared to traditional farming methods.

This year, Eeki Foods had raised $2 Mn in preseries A funding round fromAvaana Capital with participation from Better Capital and Icebreaker VC.

About Eeki Foods

Eeki Foods’ vision is a world where residue-free vegetables are affordable and accessible to everyone.

So, they have developed thier patent-pending growing chambers that provide an ideal growing environment for the plant’s root zone without using any growing media. As a result, they can grow tasty and nutritious, residue-free vegetables that are sold at Indian market prices.