Agriaku secured Arise led seed funding to enter Indonesia’s agriculture market
Agriaku, an Indonesian agritech firm, has secured an undisclosed initial investment round headed by Arise, a fund created through a partnership between MDI Ventures and Finch Capital. The fundraising round also included Wright Partners and MDI Ventures.
As part of its drive to enter Indonesia’s agriculture sector, the business wants to utilise the fresh money to boost the number of farmers on board its platform.
AgriAku was founded in May by Irvan Kolonas (a serial agricultural entrepreneur and CEO of Vasham, a firm that develops financial and operational solutions for agriculture sector stakeholders) and Danny Handoko (Ex-CEO and Co-Founder of hotel startup Airy Indonesia).
Agriaku is a platform that links agricultural supply retailers with manufacturers and first-level distributors.
In a press statement, the startup said that despite agriculture being the largest GDP contributor in Indonesia, its upstream market is fragmented and sufficient. “The problems primarily revolve around the multi-layered nature of the supply chain, causing a lack of data insights for decision-making and limited knowledge and financing capabilities for farmers,” it wrote.
According to the firm, this strategy enables farmers to easily obtain a comprehensive catalogue of SKUs of agri-inputs at a nominally competitive pricing point.
Agriaku said it will continue to extend its offers in the future to become a one-stop-shop for agricultural services, responding to the demands of many agricultural stakeholders.
DeHaat, an India-based agritech business that just received a $115 million Series D investment round from Lightrock, Sequoia Capital India, and Temasek Holdings, among others, is “amplifying the playbook,” according to the company.
“We believe that our approach of empowering local toko tani (agricultural supply shop) as our last mile agents to distribute a full stack of product and services for smallholder farmers in Indonesia has the potential to disrupt an industry that so far has been resistant to change,” said Irvan Kolonas, President and Co-Founder of Agriaku.
Agriaku claims to have empowered over 6,000 small agribusinesses and thousands of smallholder farmers in Indonesia since its beginnings.
