Yara Growth Ventures invests in one of India's leading agriculture fintech's - Jai Kisan – as part of a USD 50 million fundraise

Founded by Arjun Ahluwalia and Adriel Maniego in 2017, Jai Kisan has grown into a critical part of India's agriculture ecosystem by providing financing to both agriculture retailers and farmers. Since its founding, Jai Kisan has expanded its services to include supply chain financing and buy-now, pay-later offerings.

"We were immediately struck by the opportunity that Jai Kisan has to help enable better financing to rural Indians," says George Roche of the Yara Growth Ventures team. "Better credit access can help micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) grow their businesses, while helping growers afford products which will improve their yield and quality."

The Yara Growth Ventures team has been impressed with the professionalism and passion of the Jai Kisan team. They have a clear plan of action for how to deliver value to their customers by creating a strong fly-wheel - starting with a free software tool for MSMEs to better run their businesses, all the way to financing for the MSMEs and their customers directly.

"We are proud to have come thus far in this journey of revolutionizing financial services for rural India," says Arjun Ahluwalia, co-founder and CEO of Jai Kisan. "It is due to the strong support of our network of customers and partners, and our extremely resilient team that we have been able to launch and scale such ground-breaking solutions. We are grateful for the faith that our investors, lenders and other stakeholders have shown, and continue to show in our vision. We will continue to build on the back of this support and create impact in this underserved space, leveraging creative new age solutions and keeping customer experience at the core of our beliefs."

New investors include Yara Growth Ventures, GMO Venture Partners, and DG Daiwa Ventures who join existing investors such as Blume, Arkam Ventures, Mirae Asset, Snow Leopard Ventures, and others. Northern Arc, Alteria and MAS Financial contributed to the debt raise.

About Jai Kisan

Developer of a fintech platform created to mitigate the risk in the flow of capital to rural emerging markets. The company's platform facilitates loans at low rates with minimal paperwork for the borrower through its physical access points and generates a risk-adjusted required rate of returns for the lender, enabling clients to access the company's widespread distribution network to raise cheap loans. https://www.jai-kisan.com/ 

About Yara Growth Ventures

Yara Growth Ventures is the venture investment team within Yara International ASA investing in disruptive startups in the agri-food industry globally in order to advance the mission of responsibly feeding the world and protecting the planet. Learn more at www.yaragrowthventures.com