According to TechCrunch , an Indian start-up company “Produze” has just completed a seed round of financing. This round was led by Accel. All in Capital and Ninjacart founder and CEO Thirukumaran Nagarajan and COO Kartheeswaran KK participated in the investment. The financing amount is approximately $2.6 million. “Produze” has also recently started accepting investment applications from some retailers and agricultural producers.
The traditional export sales process of agricultural products is cumbersome, farmers need to supply agricultural products to the farmer aggregator, the farmer aggregator delivers it to another trader, and the trader forwards the goods to the exporter. The agricultural products then reach the retailers through importers and distributors, so that the agricultural products can reach the destination country.
Not only do these processes make exporting agricultural products a cumbersome process, but foreign retailers often receive products of lower quality than expected. In addition, the intermediary will also charge up to 5% of the margin to deal with the payment default risk, quality risk, inventory loss risk and price fluctuation that may occur in the transaction. This leads to higher prices for exported agricultural products, which retailers have to pay more to buy.
Additionally, they typically use email or messaging apps to place orders and follow up on shipments, resulting in inefficient communication. These difficulties have restricted Indian farmers from exporting agricultural products. Ben Mathew, founder of Produze, said: “Typically, only 0.5% of farmers have access to export channels. As a result, they tend to only produce agricultural products that can be sold locally and give up focusing on those that are suitable for export.”
Earlier this year, Ben Mathew teamed up with Gaurav Agrawal, Rakesh Sasidharan, Y Combinator and Emil Soman to start “Produze” to try to help local Indian agricultural producers enter the international market, sell to international retailers and make more money.
Mathew previously worked at Ninjacart, which operates a platform for businesses that connects farmers, manufacturers and brands with retailers. “Produze” is very different from Ninjacart. “Produze” is aimed at customers all over the world. “We go deep into the demand side in specific markets and specific countries, and although Ninjacart focuses on foreign markets, its main business is still concentrated in China,” Mathew said.
Mathew said that “Produze” works similar to Amazon, and they provide a relatively complete digital supply chain infrastructure that can serve all aspects of export transactions. “Produze” not only established import and export business, but also established last mile distribution in destination countries. “Produze” said that it has already set up an office in Dubai and plans to open offices in Europe and the United States in the next two months.
Pratik Agarwal, head of Accel, said in a statement: “We believe Produze’s technology and supply chain capabilities can help customers choose fresh produce at more affordable prices, while also compensating produce producers fairly. “
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Related events
- “Produze” completed a $2.6 million seed round, led by Accel2022-08-10
- Pinduoduo will cooperate with Hunan, Guizhou and other four provinces and cities to promote agricultural products “out of villages and into cities” 2020-10-25
- Taobao discloses “Harvest Festival” data: 820 million agricultural products are sold with 300,000 merchants2020-09-21
- Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs: Accelerate the implementation of the “Internet +” project of agricultural products going out of villages and cities 2020-05-09
- Ali aggregates agriculture-related business to help the harvest festival and create agricultural products double 11 2019-08-24
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