Aavishkaar Capital invests Rs 35 cr in Ergos

Aavishkaar Capital, the venture capital arm of Aavishkaar Group, on Wednesday said it has invested Rs 35 crore in agri-tech startup, Ergos.

Aavishkaar Capital had invested in Ergos in 2015 at ideation stage, and has worked with the promoters in scaling the company, a statement said.

The Series A funding round is expected to mop up Rs 100 crore with an Aavishkaar Capital partner and a technology venture capital fund also set to join the round, it added.

Founded by Kishor Jha and Praveen Kumar, Ergos has been building a GrainBank model that has been piloted in Bihar. The model enables farmers to digitise their foodgrain and also provides doorstep access to end-to-end post-harvest supply chain solutions to farmers.

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

"With the right amount of investment and strong institutional backing, we have the ability to make the Prime Minister's vision of doubling the farmer income come true in a much shorter span. Our focus is to build this GrainBank to serve post-harvest requirements of all farmers with a focus on small and marginal farmers," Ergos co-founder and CEO Kishor Jha said.

With Aavishkaar Capital's backing and other investors to join, the intent is to rapidly scale into nearby states and service more than a million farmers by 2025 with over 2,000 branch locations, he added.