Startup Fasal raises $4 mn to expand business in India, southeast Asia

Precision agriculture platform Fasal on Monday said it has raised USD 4 million from investors to expand business in India and South East Asia.

The company raised this fund in pre-Series A round led by 3one4 Capital with participation from existing investors Omnivore and Wavemaker Partners, Fasal said in a statement.

Other investors in this round include Genting Ventures (Malaysia), The Yield Lab Asia-Pacific, Antares Investments, and Sandeep Singhal of Nexus.

Fasal is a full-stack AI-powered IoT SaaS platform for horticulture sector.

Using on-farm sensors and scientific algorithms, Fasal delivers farm and crop-specific actionable insights to farmers in vernacular languages.

The platform is also working on a range of new services including F&V market linkages and parametric crop insurance.

To date, the startup claimed that it has helped save more than 9 billion litres of water from irrigation, reduced pesticide expenditure by around 60 per cent, and increased yields across 40,000+ acres of farmland.

"Fasal will use the funds raised in this round to expand their business across India and Southeast Asia, strengthen their full-stack services, and ramp up hiring for their sales and marketing, agronomy, and technology teams," the statement said.

Based out of Bangalore, Fasal was founded in 2018 by Shailendra Tiwari and Ananda Verma. Shailendra is a production engineering graduate from NIFT, and Ananda studied computer science at IIIT Bengaluru.

Commenting on the fundraising, the two co-founders Ananda Verma and Shailendra Tiwari said, As government policies are evolving to support more robust and open supply chains, there has never been a bigger incentive for horticulture farmers to grow more and grow better."

Fasal's full-stack offering would fuel a rapid transition of Indian horticulture farming, they added.