![]() “We are eager to enter NCR and we are talking to farm partners and retail stores in Gurugram and Delhi,” says Abhay.Įekifoods plans to set up 12 farms by the end of this financial year and by the next financial year-end, the startup is targeting to set up at least 50 farms across NCR and Northern India catering to high-end grocery retail stores and is looking forward to a strategic partnership with local vegetable distributors and sellers. The startup started selling directly to customers in Neemuch during the lockdown and to five stores in Jaipur. The present and the futureĮekifoods has 300 B2C customers in Kota at present. For every crop, the return would change,” he says. For every kg produced, we give about Rs 16/kg (for tomato) to the farm partner in return. Eekifoods sells these vegetables directly to high-end retail stores. They put in the initial capital and we take over the responsibility of growing and selling. “We currently do commercial farm setups with our farm partners. We are targeting a revenue of Rs 40 lakh per month by the end of this fiscal year,” Abhay adds. “We have a written commitment of 10 more farms this year. The startup said it would use the funding for further technology development, scaling operations, and team building. Other investors in this round included Naho Shigeta, Founder and CEO of Infobridge Holdings Shalin Sanjay Shah, Director at Core91 VC and a Gulf-based Syndicate.Įxisting investors Sumit Jain, Country Head of Birdeye and Dipesh Palod, Senior Software Engineer at Microsoft, also participated in the round. In May 2021, Eekifoods raised Pre-Series A funding from GSF Accelerator. The startup has 26 team members at present. “We both are believers in constant learning and have a hands-on approach to challenges,” says Abhay. At present, Amit looks after the farm setup, farm operations, and is responsible for growing R&D, and Abhay looks after the sales, farm automation, and finance of the company. The co-founders have known each other for the past 12 years and were batchmates at IIT Bombay. Therefore, we can manage farms in Chennai from Delhi,” Abhay tells YourStory.īy growing Indian and exotic vegetables like coriander, tomato, eggplant, cucumber, and bitter gourd at present, Eekifoods is targeting a revenue of Rs 40 lakh per month by the end of this fiscal year. “More importantly, with no-growing media, all the critical parameters of the plant growth are easily controlled and remotely managed. Started as a B2B men’s apparel brand, SNITCH went the D2C route amidst the pandemicĪccording to him, the growing chambers do not use coco-peat as a growing medium and therefore there is no cost associated with it. “We understood that to provide high-quality vegetables at a lower cost, we needed to rework the whole growing method, and therein came our growing chambers designed specifically for each crop,” says Abhay. The team then developed growing chambers, which it claims is producing crops 20 percent faster and provides better control over the taste and nutrition value, and involves less labour. The founders researched various plant growing techniques - from soil-based cultivation to the current coco-peat-based hydroponics for fruit-bearing vegetables before zeroing on hydroponics. ![]() The Kota-based agritech startup uses hydroponics technique, which involves growing plants without soil and by using nutrient-rich water. With a vision to develop a sustainable and economically viable agricultural platform, IIT Bombay graduates Amit Kumar and Abhay Singh founded Eekifoods in early 2019. It is projected that by 2050, 593 million hectares of land will need to be transformed into agricultural land to meet the growing needs of the global population. ![]() A World Bank study shows that globally, 70 percent of water usage goes towards agricultural production, and this is largely due to unsustainable irrigation practices.
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