Jai Kisan, a rural fintech startup, has raised $30 million in Series A funding led by Mirae Assets. Existing investors Blume Ventures, Arkam Ventures, NABVENTURES (NABARD), Prophetic Ventures, Better, other global investors, and prominent HNIs joined Syngenta Ventures in the round. The debt was contributed to the round by Blacksoil, Stride Ventures, and Trifecta Capital.

According to the startup, the funding will be used to hire talent, improve engineering and data science capabilities, expand into new geographies, and begin building an on-book portfolio. Jai Kisan's exclusive financial advisor for the fundraise was Veda Corporate Advisors.

Jai Kisan, founded in 2017 by Arjun Ahluwalia and Adriel Maniego, offers low-cost equipment, input, and invoice financing to rural borrowers via an app or at any of Jai Kisan's partners' tech-enabled locations. The company offers digital financial services, beginning with credit for online and offline, income-generating rural commerce transactions.

"Despite the pandemic’s multiple waves, we have seen stellar growth on our top line and bottom line while ensuring robust portfolio quality. As most financial institutions took a step back due to reliance on ground operations, it was the resilient nature of our team that made Jai Kisan stand by its borrowers through these tough times," says, Arjun Ahluwalia, Co-founder and CEO, Jai Kisan.

Ashish Dave, CEO of Mirae Asset India Venture Investments, said, “Jai Kisan is at the cusp of disrupting the rural financing industry and we’re glad to be a part of their growth story. Jai Kisan’s stellar growth, excellent asset quality, and expanding footprint make them a highly differentiated player in the segment."

To deploy credit to farmers and rural individuals, the startup has leveraged the relationship between the business and the farmer and rural individuals in a B2B2C manner. According to the company, informal credit by the seller or merchant is an expectation for customers rather than a value-added service in rural India.

According to the startup, there is a lack of formalised credit, which poses a dire and pressing challenge for rural businesses seeking to grow. Jai Kisan collaborates with over 700 organised and unorganised entities in the space, with a total customer base of over 1.5 lakh rural individuals, including farmers.

Shubhang Shankar, Managing Director, Syngenta Group Ventures, said, "At Syngenta Group Ventures, we believe that access to credit is one of the key enablers for farmers to adopt quality practices. The low penetration of traditional financing institutions in the sector creates significant financial stress for small farmers. We have been very impressed by the digitally-driven approach taken by Jai Kisan to manage the end-to-end flow of credit, thereby proving that it is viable to extend formal credit to small farmers and overcome structural challenges that have often kept inherently creditworthy farmers out of the formal financing ecosystem."

He went on to say that they hope that with this investment and the collaboration of key stakeholders in the Indian agricultural landscape, Jai Kisan will be able to extend credit offerings to millions of underserved smallholder farmers in India and beyond.

"Jai Kisan launched Bharat Khata in April 2020 - a digital ledger and smart business solution for rural businesses to manage their business anytime, anywhere. The app has captured over $380 million (Rs 2,790 crore) of annualised GTV run-rate as of March 2021 at over 25,000 storefronts," the startup said in the statement.