East Ventures, an active early stage venture capital firm in Southeast Asia, has injected an undisclosed amount of seed funding in Indonesia-based agritech startup Eragano.
Founded on October 2015, Eragano is an online end-to-end solution for small holder farmers, who represent over 15 per cent of Indonesia’s population. It targets to modernise the farming industry method to make it more sustainable.
The firm’s solution covers farming supplies procurement to scheduling to harvest selling. Eragano’s innovations are also designed to improve welfare of farmers and health of consumers.
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Eragano co-founder and CEO Stephanie Jesselyn said, “Eragano would like to use the fresh fund to hire more people, to acquire farmers and improving our technology in app and marketplace.”
Jesselyn added,. “Currently, our farmers have just done harvest time, we visited them with East Ventures team as well. And we have 38 farmers on board in our closed loop ecosystem.”
Eragano’s network of farmers work on 19 hectares of land in Pangalengan and Lembang, West Java. The commodities the farmers produce ranges from chili, onion, potatoes to cabbages.
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In mid-July, the first harvest has yielded 1.5 tons of chilli. This harvest is sold in EraganoStore, a B2B commerce which channels to hotel, restaurant and catering.
Jesselyn noted they also help farmers in terms of financing and security through micro loans and crops insurance.
“Smallholder farmers used to be squeezed by loan sharks or unfair brokers. They need to buy farm input supply in expensive price, but sell the harvest in low price. They also have limited access to micro loan and are exposed to financial risk in the event of crop failure. Other than that, this condition is getting worse by the unstable farming method,” she said. “Thus, Eragano has a great opportunity to create significant impact in farmers’ life.”
Eragano currently has 10 employees, and sells harvest crops to popular hotel and restaurants, such as Amanjiwo Hotel, and Aston Hotel. Prior to this funding, Eragano was nominated at Appcelerate.
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