Agrifood fintech start-up Ayekart eyes South, East for expansion

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Agri-food fintech start-up Ayekart, which helps connect farmer producer organisations (FPOs) to food processors and processors to retailers across various commodity value chains, is eyeing geographical expansion in the Southern and Eastern States.

Ashutosh Singh, co-founder and COO, said the company which has a presence in Andhra Pradesh, plans to expand its presence further in States such as Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala. The company is also looking to strengthen its presence in Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, Bihar and West Bengal. The company sees potential in the North-East and has started its trade operations in Meghalaya.

Ayekart currently has a major presence in States such as Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh.

Working with 160 FPOs

Over the past three years, Ayekart has created a digital ecosystem for the agri-food value chain through its technology and financial interventions helping the FPOs, food processors and MSMEs, distributors and retailers among others access markets and also credit.

The company works with some 160 FPOs across the country across commodities such as wheat, paddy, maize, millets, cashew, sago, coffee and perishables like oranges and apples among others. Last year, Ayekart’s interventions have impacted over 1,00,000 farmers across the country, Singh said.

“Currently we work with some 65 food processors and has over 110 distributors and some 34,000 merchants and retailers on our platform,” Singh said. Ayekart is basically a demand aggregation platform helps connect food processors with the FPOs. The commodities sourced from FPOs are processed and are marketed through the distributor and the retailer network developed by the company.

Series A funding

Singh said the company has been cash positive since its first year of operations. The gross transaction value (GTV) facilitated by Ayekart’s interventions touched ₹1,580 crore during 2023-24, up from ₹657 crore in 2022-23 and ₹137 crore in 2021-22, he said.

Ayekart raised $6.5 million (₹53 crore) in Series A funding recently from investors Omnivore, Siana Capital and Unleash Capital Partners.

Ayekart, which facilitated exports of oranges from Nagpur to the Middle East this year, is also looking at getting into exports going ahead, Singh said.