Greenhouse AgriTech Platform Clover Raises $5.5 Mn Series A round from Omnivore, Accel, and Mayfield

Clover announced today that it has raised over USD 5.5 million in Series A funding from Omnivore, alongside existing investors Accel and Mayfield. Clover is a greenhouse agritech platform, which partners with farmers across India and markets premium quality, branded, greenhouse-grown fresh produce through B2B and B2C channels. Accel and Mayfield earlier invested in Clover’s seed round back in December 2018, while the company was still in stealth mode.

[caption id="attachment_142079" align="alignleft" width="257"] Avinash[/caption]

Clover’s business model centers around demand-led cultivation, a managed farm network, and full stack agronomy. Demand-led cultivation means that Clover grows high quality, consistent, and traceable fresh produce for specific and predictable client demands. The managed farm network of greenhouses are based in peri-urban and rural areas surrounding urban consumption zones, thereby ensuring freshness and reducing spoilage. Clover provides a full stack agronomy solution to the greenhouse farmers in the network, improving yields and standardizing output quality.

Based in Bangalore, Clover was co-founded by Avinash BR, Gururaj Rao, Arvind Murali, and Santhosh Narasipura. Avinash previously worked as a venture investor with Aavishkaar and earlier spent almost a decade at Bosch across engineering and corporate strategy roles. Gururaj previously worked in general management and analytics roles for Myntra, Callidus Cloud, and Info Edge. Arvind was earlier based in the Gulf in various sales management roles while Santhosh worked in his family’s manufacturing business.

According to Avinash, Co-Founder of Clover, “We are thrilled to partner with Omnivore, Accel, and Mayfield as we scale our operations across multiple metro areas. This additional funding will help to accelerate the growth of our managed farm network, support our entry into new cities, and diversify our B2B and B2C fresh produce offerings."

Commenting on the transaction, Mark Kahn, Managing Partner of Omnivore, said “We believe that Clover is building India’s first fresh produce supply chain adapted to the challenge of climate change. By leveraging peri-urban greenhouses, Clover can deliver the highest quality vegetables and fruits to B2B and B2C consumers in India’s largest metro areas. Omnivore is excited to support Clover in the coming years as they scale to new heights."

Prashanth Prakash, Partner at Accel, likewise noted “Clover is transforming the perishables supply chain to better serve the new-age Indian consumer who values high quality produce. We look forward to the journey with a team that has a deep understanding of this space."

Vikram Godse, Managing Partner at Mayfield, also noted “Clover operates in the highly fragmented but large agriculture market of India. By using cutting edge technology, systems, and processes, the Clover team, led by Avinash, is disrupting the agriculture value chain for fruits and vegetables. This not only brings about economic benefits to Clover's B2B customers but also ensures significantly improved quality of produce is delivered to the end B2C consumer."

About Clover:

Clover is a greenhouse agritech platform, which partners with farmers across India and markets premium quality, branded, greenhouse-grown fresh produce through B2B and B2C channels.

About Omnivore:

Omnivore is a venture capital firm, based in India, which funds entrepreneurs building the future of agriculture and food systems. Omnivore pioneered agritech investing in India and has backed over 20 startups since 2011. Every day, Omnivore portfolio companies drive agricultural prosperity and transform food systems across India, making farming more profitable, resilient, and sustainable.

About Accel:

Accel is a leading venture capital firm that invests in people and their companies from the earliest days through all phases of private company growth. Acko, Atlassian, BlackBuck, BlueStone, BookMyShow, Braintree, BrowserStack, Cloudera, Collectabillia, CureFit, DJI, Dropbox, Etsy, Facebook, Flipkart, Freshworks, Housing-PropTiger, Lookout Security, Mitra Biotech, MuSigma, Myntra, Ola, Paxata, Portea, Qualtrics, Samunnati, Slack, Spotify, Supercell, Swiggy, UrbanClap and Vox Media are among the companies the firm has backed over the past 30 years. The firm seeks to understand entrepreneurs as individuals, appreciate their originality and play to their strengths, because greatness doesn't have a stereotype.

About Mayfield:

Mayfield is a global venture capital firm with over $2.7 billion under management. Mayfield has been investing in India since 2006 and cumulatively manages $219 million in India across its two India dedicated funds. Mayfield is currently investing out of its second fund and backs early-stage companies (Seed to Series A stage) targeting the consumer and business sectors across tech and tech-enabled verticals.

Cloud Kitchens Startup Box8 Raises $15 Mn from eWTP Ecosystem Fund, Others

Box8, one of India’s largest cloud kitchen startups has raised $15 million led by eWTP Ecosystem Fund. Existing investors Mayfield and IIFL Seed Ventures fund have also participated in this round.

Started by two IIT graduates Amit Raj and Anshul Gupta, Box8 is a technology first, full stack cloud kitchen company that is known for its All-in-1 meals, Desi Boxes & more. They own the entire value chain, from procurement of high-quality ingredients to food preparation to the last mile delivery, hence ensuring superior customer experience every time.

Box8 has a presence in 4 cities: Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune and NCR delivering over 1 million meals every month from the company-owned 110+ cloud kitchens. Its network of cloud kitchens negates the high rental & operations costs incurred by traditional restaurants and has workflows better suited for delivery.

Box8’s parent company, Poncho Hospitality Pvt. Ltd. also owns and operates the pizza delivery brand- MOJO Pizza. In less than 18 months since its inception, MOJO Pizza has grown to be the largest home-grown Pizza delivery chain delivering over 3 lakh pizzas a month. It leverages the existing delivery fleet, technology platform and the network of 110+ cloud kitchens across 4 cities.

eWTP Ecosystem Fund is headed by Mr. Youngfu Yu, a founding member of the popular Chinese web browser company UCWeb. He later became a key leader in the Alibaba ecosystem: heading multiple businesses, including Autonavi, Alimama, and Alibaba Entertainment Group.

“We are solving the biggest unsolved problem in food delivery, which is the preparation of food itself. Traditional restaurants simply have a different DNA: their food is all about experience and is meant to be eaten immediately. We are a delivery first company, designing our food keeping in mind that it will be in transit for another 10-15 minutes. Our in-house fleet delivers 100% of our orders, this gives us even greater control over the food quality,” says co-founder, Amit Raj.

“Restaurants are still lagging in technology adoption. Even the biggest brands run on archaic systems with human dependent inventions. We have built our proprietary technology platform grounds up, which forms the backbone of our seamless operations. After all, we are solving two big problems: on-demand preparation of high-quality food and delivering it piping hot within 25 mins. To keep doing this at scale, we would double down on tech,” says co-founder, Anshul Gupta.

With this additional funding, they plan to rapidly scale the business geographically to 5 more cities with 100 more kitchens in the next 12 months. They are planning to aggressively acquire talent & invest deeper in technology.

[Published unedited via BusinessWire India feed]

LEAP India Gets $3M in Bridge Round Led by Mayfield, Plans to Raise $40M More

LEAP India Pvt Ltd, which provides supply chain management services, has raised around $3 million in a bridge round led by global venture capital firm Mayfield, an existing investor, with participation from a few individual investors.

In December 2014, the company received around $4.1 million from the Silicon Valley-based Mayfield. Founded in July 2013 by Sunu Mathew, LEAP (Leading Enterprise in Advanced Pooling) India has been floated by a group of professionals with multi functional experience. It varies from strategic management, business & operations management lumber sourcing, distribution business, channel marketing, sales and supply chain. The firm is engaged in returnable packaging and pooling of equipment like wooden pallets, plastic containers, boxes and metal wire mesh. It caters to all sectors which use these products to store or transfer goods from one location to another.

“The company is in talks to raise around $40 million more,” as per DealsStreetAsia report. It will raise $20 million through equity in a couple of weeks and the remaining $20 million will be raised from various banks in tranches whenever needed, he added. The newly raised funding will be used to buy assets like pallets for FMCG business, foldable large containers (FLCs) and others.

In April 2016, Mayfield has invested $3 million series A round in Bangalore-based consumer food firm Licious for technology enhancement, marketing and consumer acquisitions. Its other investments in India include Bharat Matrimony, resto bar chain Beer Cafe, daily deals site Dealsandyou among others. In May, the VC firm announced that it has raised $525 million across two new funds ‘Mayfield XV’ and ‘Mayfield Select’. With this, Mayfield will target later-stage investments.

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