Bengaluru-based dairy IoT company Stellapps Technologies Pvt. Ltd has raised Series A funding from a consortium of high-profile investors.
Stellapps, which is backed by early-stage agri-tech-focused investment fund Omnivore Partners, raised an undisclosed amount in a round led by Mumbai-based early-stage investor Blume Ventures.
Flipkart Group CEO Binny Bansal and Venture Highway, which is advised by WhatsApp global business head Neeraj Arora, also participated in this round.
“It is inspiring to see Indian tech entrepreneurs develop game-changing solutions that can transform entire industries and the lives of hundreds of millions of farmers, globally,†Bansal told VCCircle.
Further details of the transaction could not be immediately ascertained.
Stellapps develops solutions for the dairy industry, and claims to have built a full-stack IoT platform that spans the entire value chain, including precision farming, milk procurement, cold chain logistics and processing.
The agri-tech firm was co-founded in 2011 by Ranjith Mukundan, Praveen Nale, Ravishankar Shiroor, Ramakrishna Adukuri, and Venkatesh Seshasayee. Several applications are available on its platform, including SmartFarms (milk production), smartAMCU (milk procurement), ConTrak (milk cold chain), AgRupay (dairy farmer wallet) and MooKare (animal insurance).
“We are thrilled to be working with Blume Ventures, Binny Bansal and Venture Highway as we bring transparency, data analytics, and machine learning to the global dairy industry,†said Mukundan, who along with his other co-founders was employed with Wipro Technologies before going on their own.
Stellapps counts several dairy farms, cooperatives and private dairies operating in India, Nepal, Kenya, Bulgaria, Russia and France among its clients.
In 2013, Stellapps had received seed funding from venture capital firm Omnivore Partners. It was initially incubated at the Rural Technology Business Incubator in IIT Madras.
“We are proud to see the company aggressively scaling up and receiving funding from some of India’s leading venture capitalists,†said Jinesh Shah, one of the co-founders of Omnivore.
Omnivore, which has hit the road to raise its second fund, had backed weather forecaster Skymet in 2011, processed food firm Arohan Foods in 2013, aquaculture IoT firm Eruvaka Technologies, IT and services startup Retigence Technologies in 2015, and cold storage maker Ecozen Solutions.
IoT peers
A number of startups in the broad IoT space have raised funds recently. In April, Delhi-based IoTrek Technology Pvt. Ltd, which provides industrial IoT solutions for telecommunications, energy and solar grid management, had secured $154,000 in a seed round.
Earlier this month, enterprise IoT solutions startup, Tyre Express Pvt. Ltd, had raised an additional amount in seed funding from an angel investor.
In January, TempoGO, an IoT and SaaS-based solutions provider for commercial transportation, had raised seed money from a clutch of investors.
This evolving sector also had its share of disappointments. In March, Tiger Global-backed mobile technology startup Cube26 had to shut down its IoT business, leading to job losses.
Agri-tech deals
The agri-tech space has seen a number of venture capital investments in the recent past. In March, Indian Angel Network (IAN) had invested an undisclosed amount in Gurgaon-based FarMart, a renting platform for farm equipment.
In February, Delhi-based VDSS Agri Tech Pvt. Ltd, which owns and operates Paalak.in, had raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from a clutch of angel investors.
In January, Mumbai-based RML AgTech Pvt. Ltd, which provides mobile phone-based support services to farmers, had raised $4 million from existing investor IvyCap Ventures.
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