Farmers Fresh Zone, an agricultural startup based on Kochi announced that it has received an undisclosed amount in the seed round of funding from Indian Angel Network, IAN fund, Malabar Angels and angel network NativeLead.
Farmers Fresh Zone is an innovative startup by Pradeep PS, a computer science engineer from Calicut University. FarmersFZ helps farmers to sell vegetables, fruit, and others directly to customers.
Founded in the year 2015, this is the first time FarmersFZ is raising funds from an external investor.
IAN’s funding was led by members Nagaraja Prakasam and PK Gopalakrishnan, Farmers Fresh Zone Pvt. Ltd said in a statement on Tuesday.
“India is the second-largest producer of Fruits and Vegetables (F&V) in the world after China, and the 300-million-tonne Indian F&V market is estimated at over Rs 4 lakh crore. Moreover, nearly 95 percent of this is in the unorganized general trade, operating through local vegetable vendors sourcing from traditional mandis and multiple intermediaries. With the right mix of technology and enabling market access, we believe there is potential to transform the value chain of all fresh-produce crops. Through our platform, we are helping the rural farmers turn profitable and directly reach out their customers,” Pradeep PS, CEO at FarmersFZ, said in a statement
IAN’s Prakasam said “One of the main reason agriculture is not viable to farmers is inefficient supply chain – merely 30% of what consumer pay goes to farmers. FarmersFZ ‘s unique model encourages farmers to use technology to track and use best practices and rewards them with better prices while consumer gets the complete transparency and traceability, so they know the farmer who is growing their vegetables and fruits, and probably visit them as well thus creating community commerce.”
The firm is working towards developing and creating an algorithm to help farmers predict their income and yield.
Currently, FramersFZ connects more than 350 growers and close to 10,000 customers. In future, the startup aims at launching operations in seven more cities in India in four years.
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