Ergos raises Rs 38.5 crore from Chiratae Ventures, Aavishkaar Capital

Agri-tech start up Ergos Business Solutions on Wednesday said it has raised Rs 38.5 crore in Series A round with fresh investment from Chiratae Ventures and Aavishkaar Capital.

Chiratae Ventures led the Series A round with an investment of Rs 23.5 crore, while Aavishkaar Capital, the impact investing arm of Aavishkaar Group, invested an additional Rs 15 crore, the company said in a statement.

"The equity round is expected to be a Rs 80 crore raise with another institutional investor set to join the round," the statement said.

Ergos founder and CEO Kishor Jha said the company is building Ergos Grainbank to serve small and marginal farmers by leveraging technology and data science to disrupt the way farmers deal with their produce.

"We are extremely excited to have Chiratae on board; and along with the continued support from Aavishkaar Capital, we intend to rapidly scale our geographic footprint and remain focussed to service farmers directly at farmgate at over 2,000 Grainbank locations over the next few years," Jha said.

Founded by Jha and Praveen Kumar from Bihar, Ergos has been working on a farm-gate based Grainbank model that they have piloted in multiple districts of Bihar.

The model enables farmers to digitise their food grains and also provides them with doorstep access to end-to-end post harvest supply chain solutions by leveraging a technology platform to ensure seamless service delivery.

The Ergos tech platform operates like a bank and offers storage, digitisation, credit and liquidation facility to farmers through the single platform.

"Ergos is bridging the large gap between the selling price of produce and the realisation of farmers at the farm-gate by using technology to facilitate credit and market linkages to the grains stored with it," Chiratae Ventures founder and managing director TCM Sundaram said.

"This opportunity is massive and Ergos is expected to capitalise on its early lead to become a market leader," Sundaram added.