BharatAgri, an advisory-led farming inputs ecommerce platform, announced a $4.3 million Series A round of funding sponsored by Arkam Ventures, an early-stage business fund. Capria Ventures, India Quotient, 021 Capital, and Omnivore also participated in the round. The cash will be utilized to extend BharatAgri's ecommerce platform into new markets and to improve last-mile deliveries. Rahul Chandra, managing director of Arkam Ventures, will join the board of BharatAgri. This is the fund's third investment in the agritech area. It is based in Bengaluru.

BharatAgri, founded by IIT Madras alumni Siddharth Dialani and Sai Gole, offers smart farming consulting services to help farmers discover and order the finest inputs for their farming needs. The company has developed prediction algorithms that deliver personalized advisories based on crop, region, and weather variables. These bespoke recommendations are available to farmers in order to boost farm productivity, minimize input costs, and reduce labor effort. BharatAgri's revenue source, an ecommerce portal, sells over 10,000 agricultural products, including fertilizers, seeds, herbicides, insecticides, and farming equipment, delivered across India to over 20,000 pin codes.

"Over 50 million farmers will use the internet for the first time in the next three years, and we want BharatAgri to be their bridge to the digital era of agriculture that is now dawning". BharatAgri intends to use this investment to "further strengthen its rural supply chain, expand its user base, and become the largest and de facto e-commerce platform for farmers", Dialani said. Dialani that the company's goal for the fiscal year ending March 2024 is to have more than Rs 70 crore in gross merchandise value (GMV). The platform has over ten lakh unique monthly users, over ten thousand stock-keeping units, and over a hundred marketplace partners. It currently serves approximately one crore farmers in a year.

"In India, the agricultural inputs market is worth $44 billion and is plagued by stockouts, misinformation, and non-scientific usage behavior". Said Arkam's Chandra, "The credible advice from BharatAgri helps bridge the trust deficit that accompanies input purchasing and promises to make available a digital channel for thousands of new products and brands that farmers seek to buy". Arkam Ventures also backs Jai Kisan, a rural financial platform for farmers and retailers, and Jumbotail, a business-to-business food and grocery marketplace and retail platform. The business opened its second fund in June with a goal of raising $180 million.