The agri-fintech start-up KiVi (Kisan Vikas) said that it has raised Rs 15 crore in a seed round headed by Caspian Leap for Agriculture Fund, Piper Serica Angel Fund, YAN Angel Fund, Impact Innovators, and Entrepreneurs Foundation, among others. "The investment will help KiVi to build a robust technology platform for scale-up, increase the last-mile presence across many districts, strengthen the product and risk capabilities, and obtain an NBFC licence", said Joby CO, Founder and CEO of KiVi.

The Chennai-based company, which is run by Agrosperity Tech Solutions and was incubated at IIT Madras Research Park, is now active in four districts in Tamil Nadu and Bihar and plans to grow in the southern states over the next five years. Over 1,500 farmers have been helped by the company to get credit so far. It has also provided MSME loan programmes to agribusiness owners and enabled trade and commerce finance for commodities including wheat, paddy, and maize.

Joby, when it came to loans, banks favoured south Indian portfolios, and the quality of the portfolio, the enforceability of contracts, and the lack of real-world agri-fintech players were the reasons they chose to open a base in Tamil Nadu. The business, though, is looking at other markets. Manoj Ramaswamy, Co-Founder and CFO of KiVi, said, We want to grow to five states over the next five years, with a concentration on South India, including Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, and Karnataka.

Joby continued, "By leveraging our technology and last-mile transaction capability, the company enables timely, affordable and scale-based credit as well as commerce from the farmgate to the processor." Farmer households and agribusinesses like input retailers, output aggregators, farmer producer organisations, and equipment rentals make up the farmgate ecosystem.

While the farmgate ecosystem offers a huge market opportunity for credit and commerce, KiVi contends that it has been underserved by the formal markets because there aren't any solutions that take into account the particular characteristics of the parties. Seasonal cash flows, the lack of formal income proof and land ownership proof, fragmented landholding, traditional lenders' inability to build a cost-effective delivery model and participate in adjacent commerce opportunities are the main gaps that KiVi is addressing, according to a statement from the company.

KiVi stated that although satellite imaging technologies are developing, the business was concentrating on cadastral mapping "which will lead us to lead the ownership", according to Salil Nair, Co-Founder and CTO of KiVi. A cadastral map is a public record that often contains extensive information on real estate in a given area and is maintained by the government.