[Funding alert] Agritech Startup Nutrifresh raises $5 mn in pre-seed round

Hydroponics-focused Nutrifresh, an agri-tech startup has raised $5 million in a pre-series seed funding round from Sandiip Bhammer (Green Frontier Capital), Theodore Cleary (Archer Investments), Mathew Cyriac (Florintree Advisors and ex-Blackstone India), Sky Kurtz (Pure Harvest AE), and among others.

The startup plans to use the funds for scaling up operations, better traceability and transparency of production, marketing and building an integrated farm-tech platform.

Pune-based Nutrifresh was founded in 2014 by Sanket Mehta and Ganesh Nikam, It aims to provide nutrient-rich sustainable pesticide-free hydroponic products.

Its clients include over 100 B2B aggregators in the Indian market such as Nature’s Basket, Big Basket, Swiggy, Kisan Connect, McDonald, Amazon Fresh and Reliance Fresh, among others.

“Nutrifresh is committed to bringing focused hydroponic farming which is robust, tech-enabled, IOT based and gives consistent production. The funding in the agritech space is proof of the concept encircling the fact that residue-free and quality veggies are most critical in an urban lifestyle and Nutrifresh is focused on bringing quality food security”, said, Sanket Mehta, cofounder of Nutrifresh.

“With the current round of funding, Nutrifresh aims to enhance the production capacities and standardize the production process thus, scaling farms with requisite SOPs to gain a higher competitive edge. Nutrifresh wants to establish itself as a household brand”, he added.

Currently, the startup has reached out to 15000+ households in Mumbai and Pune and is on an expansion spree and exports fresh produce to Singapore and UAE.

Nutrifresh currently operates in 3 modes of sales – B2C (Farm to Direct Consumers), B2B (Farm to other Small Farm Growers or Aggregators) and Modern Trade.

“Agri and foodtech are both big focus areas for our climate mitigation-focused venture fund and we are constantly looking to explore and invest in innovative businesses with compelling models. Nutrifresh is all of these and more. But what struck us as being most unique about Nutrifresh was that it was building out an extensive knowledge repository on a wide variety of products through its proprietary agricultural operating system at the largest single-location controlled-environment agricultural facility in the western region of India (and directly selling to almost 15,000 households in the twin cities of Mumbai and Pune),” said, Sandiip Bhammer, managing partner of Green Frontier Capital.

About Nutrifresh

Team Nutri Fresh is a team of young and enthusiastic brigades who are committed to supplying superior quality, non – GMO, residue & pesticide-free Fruits, Vegetables and Herbs by using the best and latest technologies ever known to mankind – HYDROPONIC FARMING.