Eeki Foods, an agritech startup, has raised Series A funding of $6.5 million led by General Catalyst (GC). Other key investors participating in this round include Avaana Capital; Better Capital; Irving Fain, CEO and founder of Bowery Farming which is a GC portfolio company with $2.3 billion in valuation; Subbu Palaniappan, director and head of Amazon Prime India; Srinivas Narayanan, former VP Engg at Facebook; Akhil Gupta, and Amit Kumar Agarwal, co-founders of NoBroker.com and Shrishti Sahu of SSV.
The Bengaluru-based company is in the area of residue-free vegetables to make it affordable and accessible. With farms in Rangpur, Bhilwara, Talera ,Nanta and Panipat Eeki foods aims to minimise price fluctuations in market staples like cucumber, chillies, and Tomatoes, while keeping produce nutritious and residue-free.It had earlier raised funds from GSF Accelerator and Avaana Capital, Better Capital ice.vc and O2 Angels Network respectively. Other existing investors include Ramakant Sharma, founder of Livspace; Harsh Shah, founder of Fynd; Kunal Shah, founder of CRED; Dinesh Agarwal, CEO of IndiaMart; and Rajesh Sawhney, founder and CEO of GSF Accelerator, Bollywood actor Cyrus Sahukar, Sumit Jain of BirdEye and Shrishti Sahu of SSV.
The company is setting up large-scale, climate-proof farms equipped with proprietary growing chambers that allow low-cost production of high-quality vegetables.Abhay Singh, CEO and co-founder, Eeki Foods and Amit Kumar, COO and co-founder of Eeki Foods, said, “The fresh funds will be used to scale Eeki to hundreds of acres. This coming year, we will focus on building the team, technology and organisational scale to make this growth a reality. We are actively looking to establish partnerships with corporates, HNIs, and other retail farmers in Rajasthan, Delhi-NCR, and Maharashtra to build such farms across the country.”The company noted that technology enables the farm's climate to be controlled, allowing vegetables to be grown all year without being affected by seasonal variations.
The company’s patent-pending IoT control mechanism deployed on farms, makes operations more robust, cost-effective, and less reliant on manual labour. The farms provide 300% more yield on any land barren or unused at 50% of the growing cost, using 80% less water.Anand Chandrasekaran, partner at General Catalyst, said, "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."
Anjali Bansal of Avaana Capital, said, "Eeki's patent-pending technology revolutionizes controlled environment agriculture, producing high-quality staple vegetables at affordable prices. We are proud to participate in the team's journey as investors, and are excited about Eeki building the future of farming."
