Onato raises $2.2 mn in seed round led by Vertex Ventures and Omnivore

Onato, a data-driven B2B platform for fresh produce, has announced a seed financing of USD 2.2 million. This round was led by Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India with participation from Omnivore.

Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India invests in high-growth start-ups seeking their first round of institutional venture capital (VC) funding with a primary focus on India, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and other emerging hubs of innovation across the region.

Omnivore is a VC firm, based in India, which funds entrepreneurs building the future of agriculture and food systems.  

Agri supply chain start-up Onato is building a technology platform for India’s USD 100-billion-plus fruits and vegetables (F&V) industry. It plans to use this funding for talent acquisition and scaling up its operations.

Based out of Bangalore, Onato was founded in February 2021 by entrepreneurs Vedant Katiyar and Ashish Jindal. An alumnus of FMS Delhi, Vedant was the co-founder of agritech startup Gobasco. He then went on to explore various agritech business models before launching Onato. Ashish, after graduating from IIT Delhi, has spent over nine years building technology at Amazon, Swiggy, and Astrotalk and co-founded CodeYeti.

Regarding their future plans, Vedant Katiyar commented, “More than 60 per cent population of India is dependent on agriculture and yet tech penetration in the agri-supply chain is quite low. Decision-making is mostly intuition-driven which leads to a lot of volatility in prices and wastage. I believe bringing in transparency in price discovery and fulfilment through technology will play a crucial role in streamlining the supply chains and decision-making.”

Ashish Jindal added, “We envision that by harnessing the power of on-ground data, we can create a revolutionary change in the existing agri value-chain, which will result in better value distribution for all participants from farmer up to end-consumer.”

Kanika Mayar, Executive Director of Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India, observed, “Most of India’s fresh supply moves through inefficient supply chains due to fragmented volumes, arbitrary pricing and complex credit management. Onato aims to solve these critical bottlenecks and we are excited to partner with Vedant and Ashish on their mission of bringing scalable disruption to the F&V supply chain in India.”

Jinesh Shah, Managing Partner of Omnivore, said, “Onato’s well-crafted digital intervention and robust fulfilment process are easing the burden of credit in the supply chain. The start-up is also solving the issue of income instability in Indian agriculture that so often compels farmers to exit farming altogether.”

Despite its staggering size, the Indian F&V value chain is fraught with challenges. The ecosystem grapples with arbitrary price setting, unreliable payment schedules, and a VClack of access to real-time data between suppliers and downstream market participants.