Agritech startup iProcure from Kenya recently closed a $10.2 million Series B financing led by Investisseurs & Partenaires. The funding, which is organized as debt and equity, will support iProcure’s entry into Uganda and Tanzania as well as the launch of a credit offering to allow agro-retailers to buy supplies on credit. Novastar Ventures, British International Investment (BII), and Ceniarth also took part in the funding round.
IProcure helps to reduce food costs and the impact of agriculture on the environment by ensuring smallholder farmers can plant their crops on time and produce more with less land. The delivery of essential agricultural inputs to more than 1 million farmers in Africa is being streamlined by iProcure, which has increased 23 times over the past five years.
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With its technology-driven insights on supply levels and prices, IProcure eliminates the various levels of middlemen found in the conventional agricultural supply chain. This guarantees the availability, quality, and delivery of essential agricultural inputs like seeds and fertilizer at a price lower than going market rates.
Niraj Varia, iProcure’s new CEO, and a former partner at its major investor, Novastar Ventures, commented on the funding in a statement: “This funding will expand iProcure’s product offering to include credit services and a new POS system for agro-dealers to better forecast their inventory needs and reduce pilferage within their shops. In addition to strengthening our current operations with more warehouses and delivery vehicles. This will enable our 5,000+ partner retailers to boost their profits and better cater to the millions of farmers who rely on each store.
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“iProcure is playing a pivotal role in transforming the agricultural sector in Africa by digitizing agro-retailer networks and making last-mile agricultural inputs distribution more efficient,” said Asif Noorani, Senior Investment Manager of Impact Investing at I&P. By consolidating the region’s fragmented agricultural inputs sector, iProcure improves farmers’ access to genuine and affordable agricultural inputs. These processes, in the end, reduce food production costs and improve food security.”
iProcure is changing traditional agricultural supply chains in East Africa by developing its own distribution infrastructure and using it to directly connect significant agricultural input suppliers with nearby agro-dealers.