Gramco Infratech Pvt Ltd (Gramco), a rural-focused company that creates infrastructure to support farmers, secured its first-round of equity funding of Rs 15 crore ($2.3 million) from Samridhi Fund. Gramco will use these funds to construct agri-warehouses in Madhya Pradesh and to meet its working capital requirements.
Indore-based three-year old Gramco primarily operates from the vicinity of villages and producing areas where it is involved in creating and leasing full service agri-infrastructure to the farmers.
Currently, it owns two multi-service facilities near Indore and plans to set up another 11 by FY15, increasing the number of farmers it serves from 700-800 to 10,000 by 2015.
The infrastructure it provides spans across inputs, warehousing, collateral finance and contract farming/seed production, fully automated handling/cleaning/grading and procurement of agri-commodities by creating market links for farmers.
The Samridhi Fund was launched as a private sector development programme by UK-based Department for International Development (DFID) in partnership with Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI). The fund has a targeted corpus size of around Rs 600 crore ($100 million) and recently its first close saw nearly 85 per cent of the commitment from DFID (see: SIDBI Ventures makes first close of Samridhi Fund at $58M).
Intellecap's investment banking vertical acted as the sole financial advisor for the transaction.
(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)
