Agritech precision farming startup Samhitha raises $1.5MN in seed funding

HYDERABAD, 1 December 2021: Samhitha Crop Care Clinics, an agritech start-up offering precision farming advisory, announced on December 1, 2021, that it has raised $1.5 million in a seed round led by TechStar Group, and participated by Quadrant Resource and angel investors.

Founded in 2020 Jagan Chitiprolu, Kalyan Enjamoori, and Dr. Shyamsundar Reddy, Samhitha has pioneered a Digital Tree Health Audit System (DTHAS), a unique method of recording, analysing, and interpreting the health of individual trees in a farm through data, telemetry devices, and Citron app. The DTHAS method helps generate virtual maps delivering a detailed picture of the health status of the orchard, both historically and in real-time.

According to Dr. G. Syamsundar Reddy, CEO, Samhitha, and former Senior Scientist, Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) “With DTHAS and individual tree monitoring, treatment can be limited to affected trees instead of treating the entire orchard. Healthy trees can be given special care to improve productivity, while historical data is maintained for individual trees to assess their performance.”

Jagan Chitiprolu, Founder, Samhitha, and Harvard Business School alumnus stated, “In India, agriculture contributes to over 18 percent GDP. But over 80 percent farmers are small or marginalized. They have limited access to high-end technology, crop experts, and markets. We conceptualized Samhitha with a singular goal - empower agriculture experts with data & insights, who in turn enable farmers to maximize their produce.”

The company plans to leverage these funds to accelerate advisor onboarding and team expansion. The funds will further boost Samhitha’s plan to solve market linkage challenges for the farmers and amplify their profitability. While Samhitha is focused exclusively on citrus growers in Telangana and AP currently, the company plans to expand its advisory services across the nation. Triumvir Law were the legal counsel for the transaction who helped structure the same.

Samhitha solves two most critical challenges in precision farming advisory – data-driven advisory on time, and clinical treatment at the individual tree level. Samhitha’s Citron app analyses data points pertaining to soil, weather, and plant to communicate recommendations to the farmers. And with the proprietary data processing engine, the app enables detection and classification of more than fifty diseases in trees.

Commenting on the traction Samhitha has gained until now, Jagan added, “We conducted a pilot run in the Telangana region, focusing exclusively on citrus growers. Spanning across 4 lakh trees and 3500 acres, Samhitha enabled farmers to clock over 30% higher yield YOY and identified over 52 on-field defects.”

Focused on growth and strategic initiatives, Samhitha has added Saurabh Gupta, Partner at Naviz Analytics and Ram Maruri, Lead India Foundation to their Corporate Advisory Board.