Agri-tech startup Samunnati has raised its Series D funding of $55 million (approx. Rs 387 crore). The major investor in this round is Nuveen. This is an investment management arm of Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America (TIAA). Existing investors Elevar Equity, responsAbility, and Accel Partners also participated in this round of funding.
Samunnati Financial & Intermediation Services Private Limited is the company that owns the startup Samunnati.
The startup had already raised Rs 200 crore previously bringing the total up to Rs 587 crore. Samunnati will use these freshly raised funds to expand their business geographically and to enhance their offerings.
Anil Kumar SG, Samunnati’s Promoter and CEO, said, “We are pleased to welcome Nuveen to our ever-supporting group of investors. This investment will help to continue with our differentiated offerings and enable agricultural value chains reach a higher equilibrium, thereby allowing markets to work for smallholder farmers. We see a strong potential for alignment between the impact investment arm of Nuveen and Samunnati's focus on providing working capital to value chain players along with aggregation, market linkages & advisory services. We are grateful to all our existing investors for their continued support and confidence in Samunnati’s model.”
Samunnati has a business model that works across the agriculture value chain by providing financial intermediation, market linkages as well as advisory services, through financial and non-financial solutions. Unlike traditional lenders who tend to focus on crop loans or agricultural input loans, Samunnati has built the expertise needed to assess smallholder farmer needs and design appropriate financial products that are not collateralised. Samunnati is present across 14 states and has so far disbursed over Rs 1500 crore worth of credit, impacting 2 million farmers, indirectly. It offers customised financial products such as working capital loans to Community-Based Organisations (CBO) and receivable finance to Agri SMEs. It is an RBI registered Systematically Important Non-Deposit taking NBFC.
The investors have reposed their faith in the startup and hope that their innovative model of enriching India’s agricultural sector will result in rapid growth.