NABVENTURES , the investment arm of agriculture and rural development institution NABARD has made its first investment in Mumbai-based rural fintech startup Jai Kisan as part of a ₹30 crore funding.
NABVENTURES launched a proposed collection of over ₹500 Crore. The pre-series A round of funding was supervised by Arkam Ventures (formerly Unitary Helion) along with participation from existing investors Blume Ventures, Prophetic Ventures, and Better Capital and other investors including The Chatterjee Group (TCG), Rajiv Sahney of New Vernon Capital LLC, and Sanjay Mariwala of OmniActive Health Technologies invested as a part of this round.
Jai Kisan aims to invest the capital to engage across operation roles and process management, and also invest in its technology platform, as it looks to provide new financial service offerings. Jai Kisan is a technology platform, founded by Arjun Ahluwalia and Adriel Maniego, which targets to provide credit as well as a bunch of financial products to the rural economy. It also joins with equipment dealers, agriculture retailers, collection centers, and market linkage platforms, to directly provide credit to farmers who are working in the agriculture, poultry, and dairy value chain.
Arjun Ahluwalia, Co-founder, and CEO of Jai Kisan mentioned that partnership with Adriel started Jai Kisan to assist fairly priced credit (and other financial services) to rural borrowers. Over the past few months, they built a diverse book while ensuring delivery of credit directly and more importantly – cheaply, across 10 states including the most backward parts of the country. These direct loans to farmers also help them to build their credit profile and history, easing access to direct loans and financial services for them in the future.
In the last six months, Jai Kisan said it has expended over ₹50 Crore in working capital loans to more than 5500 farmers across various income groups from 10 states.
The interest rates for loans provided by Jai Kisan ranges between 16%-18%, with the company currently partnering with 3 banks and 5 NBFCs including Avanti Finance, which is funded by Ratan Tata and Nandan Nilekani.
Rahul Chandra, Managing Director of Arkam Ventures stated that few startups have the supervising view of a large unutilized space. Even fewer startups have been progressing in these challenging times. Jai Kisan is an odd combination of both the above along with an eccentric business model that supports multiple participants of the Agri supply chain.
