India's Omnivore raises $97m for second fund
Omnivore Partners, an Indian venture capital firm focused on impact investment in the local agriculture industry, has closed its second early-stage fund with $97 million in commitments.
LPs include CDC Group, FMO, BASF Venture Capital, Mistletoe, Soranz, Belgian Investment Company for Developing Countries (BIO), and Swiss Investment Fund for Emerging Markets (SIFEM). Omnivore had targeted a corpus of $75 million.
The fund reached a first close of $46 million in February last year with support from RBL Bank, the Rockefeller Foundation, KfW, Dutch Good Growth Fund, Small Industries Development Bank of India, AXA Investment Managers, and Sorenson Impact Foundation.
About 20 start-ups are expected to be invested in total with ticket sizes as high $4 million. Focus areas include agricultural technology, as well as businesses in rural and farm-related fields such as storage and logistics, energy, water, and financial inclusion.
Five investments have been made to date. These include robot maker Tartan Sense, online marketplace DeHaat, agribusiness and commodities platform Intello Labs, delivery services provider Doodhwala, and data analytics company AgNext.
Omnivore was founded in 2010 with a view that technology offers the best opportunity to address the challenges faced by India’s smallholder farmers. Agtech-enabled improvements to farm yields and crop pricing are in turn hoped to support sustainable rural prosperity.
The firm’s first fund raised about $39 million in 2013 almost entirely from domestic investors. It has been fully deployed across 12 companies, including weather forecasting technology provider Skymet. Omnivore claims the portfolio serves 5.2 million farmers.
India is sometimes estimated as having the second largest amount of arable land in the world, and half the country’s working population is said to be employed in agricultural industries. Agtech investors have targeted this space by focusing on specific pain points of these workers at the farm level.
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