Agri services firm Arya raises $6 mln from Omnivore, LGT Lightstone Aspada

BENGALURU: Arya Collateral Warehousing Services Pvt Ltd has raised $6 million in a pre-Series B funding round from venture capital firm Omnivore and existing investor LGT Lightstone Aspada.

The Noida-based company provides post-harvest services including warehousing, warehouse receipt financing, rural storage discovery, collateral management and market linkages.

Arya’s clients include farmers, farmer producer organisations (FPOs), financial institutions, commodity traders and corporate agribusinesses. The company manages over 2.5 million tonnes of farm commodities across 1,400 warehouses, it said in a statement.

It also offers warehouse receipt financing via Aryadhan, its non-banking financial company (NBFC) subsidiary. Aryadhan provides credit to farmers, FPOs and SME aggregators who have stored commodities in Arya's warehouse network.

The company plans to use the funds to grow its storage network and warehouse receipt financing business, and lay the foundations for a pan-India farm commodities warehousing marketplace. Arya will also launch a rural storage discovery platform.

"A significant part of the funds will be used to increase the book of Aryadhan, the financial services arm," said Prasanna Rao, co-founder and chief executive of Arya, over phone. "We will use a part of the funds to build innovative storage technology which could facilitate storage at the farm gate, without construction of warehouses," he added.

The company is in the process of building an online warehousing marketplace where services such as finance, logistics, labour, insurance will be available on one platform.

Until 2013, Arya was part of the JM Baxi Group. The same year, Rao and Anand Chandra acquired a controlling stake in the company.

“Arya’s warehousing model profitably serves the agri storage and financing needs of smallholders, FPOs, and corporations in the smaller rural markets. With their experience supporting technology-driven innovation in agriculture, Omnivore’s coming on board will strengthen our next generation work to further improve efficiencies in the post-harvest ecosystem,” Rao said.

“The Arya team is transforming agri storage and financing across rural India, making small-scale warehousing viable at the village level, which farmers desperately require,” Jinesh Shah, managing partner of Omnivore, said.

The company plans to launch its Series B fundraising round by mid-2020.