Lawrencedale Agro Processing India (Leaf), the Nilgiris headquartered full-stack agri-tech major, is looking to clock a GMV (Gross Merchandise Value), of Rs 4,000 crore over the next 2-3 years’ time. The company which dovetails a wide range of integrated services and products to the agriculture ecosystem, is ramping up its operations and is looking to raise $25 million through the private equity route.
The company is currently offering livelihood improvement solutions to more than a million marginalised small-land hold and tribal farmers and is looking to bring sustainable livelihood improvements to more than 10 million farmers over the next three years.
Palat Vijayaraghavan, founder and CEO, Lawrencedale Agro Processing India, said, “There is a good amount of interest from global and Indian private equity investors. In fact, for the fourth time around, our existing three institutional investors have funnelled more funds into us. Our integrated agriculture services platform – Leaf Farmer Network, powered by Mastercard, has gained significant traction during the past year and with this platform we are able to service farmers across any location.”
Leaf Farmer Network (LFN), powered by Mastercard, digitise marketplaces, payments, workflows, and farmer transaction histories by connecting buyers, farming inputs, suppliers, agtechs, and banks with FPOs/farmers, helping to create a commercially sustainable ecosystem comprising all relevant agriculture value chain players with equitable commercial exchange mechanisms. This initiative will also support the farmers through comprehensive training and capacity building in entire lifecycle of the harvest, including post-harvest management to reduce wastage.
“We have close to 500 FPOs (Farmer Producer Organisations) and more than a million marginalised farmers using LFN to access a wide range of services – ranging from agriculture inputs, technical advisory services, organised financial services, logistics, finding and transacting with new markets and buyers. Multiple services and products players have already plugged into the LFN ecosystem. This platform frees up significant bandwidth to the farmers’ time and energy and enables them to focus on agriculture rather than chase more than couple of dozen service and product providers at different points of the agriculture lifecycle,” added Vijayaraghavan.
