NEW DELHI, 29 June 2020: Aryadhan Financial Solutions Pvt Ltd, the financing arm of post-harvest agri startup Arya which provides assisted Fintech solution for Post-Harvest finance needs of smallholder farmers, FPOs and micro enterprises has crossed the book size of INR 100 Crores.
Availability of finance for their working capital requirements is a key challenge felt by small farmers and their organisations and was more pronounced during the COVID 19 lockdown, the company said in a statement.
During this challenging time, Aryadhan leveraged its technological strengths to facilitate seamless availability of post-harvest credit to farmers and FPOs. The result is very much visible in the business numbers of the company.
Speaking on this development, Aryadhan managing director D. Chattanathan said, “We are keen to nurture and build the post-harvest space in the primary and secondary markets. This will enable the farmer and the farmer produces organizations to realize better values and for the micro-enterprises easy access to finance. We hope to be the largest lender in the FPC space and we believe that we have made a great beginning in this direction.”
“With a book of more than INR 100 crore, we feel even currently we would be the largest NBFC lender in the FPC space in post-harvest. We are thankful to various governments across the country for enabling us to work during the COVID time, which helped us in serving the farmers during the lockdown period too” Chattanathan said.
The company’s NBFC general manager and chief business officer Inderjeet Singh stressed on the fact they adopt the cluster-based approach for growing the business and they have identified about 40 odd clusters to grow the book in the years to come.
He further reiterated that while most of the NBFC feared delinquency Aryadhan experienced good recovery being a lender in the post-harvest space thereby aiding in improved book quality.
While talking about, ease of raising debt for smaller NBFCs like Aryadhan, their group CFO Sandeep Katiyar mentioned that it is challenging for smaller NBFCs to raise resources. However, despite the challenges, adding further, Sandeep said that they could raise enough resources with the support of a few NBFCs and Banks.
Arya also collaborated with multiple stakeholders for novel innovative ways of doing business to mitigate challenges related to lockdown.
FPOs struggled for their Post-Harvest needs like warehousing and working capital during the lockdown period. Arya has leveraged technology to a great extent to navigate above challenges to extend service to FPOs.
Established in 2013, Arya Collateral Warehousing Services has a presence across 20 states in India. It is among the largest service provider to agriculture corporates and the FPO ecosystem in catering to their warehousing and post-harvest needs.
Arya has managed 2.7 MMT of peak tonnage managed in the year 2019 with 1,500 warehouses with AUM of INR 55 Bn. It also has a 100% owned NBFC, Aryadhan, with a strong client base covering farmers, FPOs, processors and Corporates and completed loan disbursements of INR 2,000 million.
Arya has raised $9M funding by strong investors in the Agri-tech space including LGT Lightstone Aspada and Omnivore till now.
