Rural vehicle marketplace Tractor Junction raises $5.7 mn in seed funding

Rural vehicle marketplace, Tractor Junction, raised $5.7 million in a seed round co-led by Info Edge Ventures and Omnivore. Existing investors AgFunder GROW Impact Fund and Rockstart AgriFood Fund also participated in the round, alongside angels including Vikram Chopra & Mehul Agrawal - the co-founders of Cars24, Vellayan Subbiah & Arun Venkatachalam from the Murugappa Group, and Sanjiv Rangrass.

Tractor Junction is India’s largest digital marketplace to buy, sell, finance, and insure new and used tractors, farm equipment, and rural commercial vehicles, said the company in a statement. Tractor Junction is changing the rural vehicle space by providing necessary information and vetted reviews on farm machinery, enabling users to compare shortlisted options, and bringing transparency in pricing.

Rajat Gupta, co-founder of Tractor Junction, said, “The rural vehicle ecosystem is at the cusp of a digital revolution and our team at Tractor Junction are excited to tackle the opportunity that lies ahead.”

Based in Noida, Tractor Junction was founded in 2019 by Animesh Agarwal, Rajat Gupta, and Shivani Gupta. Animesh, an IIM Shillong alumnus, was previously leading the North India operations of Cars24, and earlier in his career worked for Mahindra’s farm equipment business across sales, channel development, digitisation, and strategy roles. Rajat is a second generation tractor professional, who earlier ran a Mahindra tractor dealership, before initially bootstrapping Tractor Junction together with Shivani Gupta in their hometown of Alwar, Rajasthan.  

Over the last two years, Tractor Junction has experienced seven-fold growth in annual revenues and has remained operationally profitable. In December 2021, Tractor Junction acquired rival marketplace TractorGuru (the second-largest farm machinery portal), further strengthening its leadership in this space. In the last 12 months, the Tractor Junction portal had over 30 million unique visitors, and the brand has rapidly gained prominence in rural India.

The startup has also created over 1 million hours of original content shared across YouTube and other social media. Tractor Junction plans to use this funding for talent acquisition, development of financial services, and launching physical stores for used tractor transactions across northern India.

Kitty Agarwal, partner at Info Edge Ventures, said, “The used tractor and  farm equipment market is highly unorganized with a lack of established sales channels. As a result, farmers struggle with access to quality information and inventory for a relatively high value purchase.  Tractor Junction is bringing convenience, transparency, and affordability to the farm equipment buying process, thus empowering farmers and creating a winning ecosystem for all stakeholders.”

Jinesh Shah, the managing partner of Omnivore, observed, “By clearing the haze of information asymmetry, Tractor Junction is empowering smallholder farmers with access to valuable data and affordable high-quality farm vehicles. Tractor Junction will have a far-reaching impact on farmer profitability, and we at Omnivore are thrilled to support this journey.”