The fresh capital is being used to build out farm infrastructure, augment the management team, and expand the company distribution capabilities
Superplum, an agritech startup backed by some of Silicon Valley’s most notable investors, has completed its pre-series A investment round. Founded in 2019, Superplum has raised $6.8Mn since its inception. The fresh capital is being used to build out farm infrastructure, augment the management team, and expand the company distribution capabilities.
Superplum is an ambitious venture aimed at addressing Indian agriculture’s supply chain problems by designing and building an all-new state-of-the-art supply chain and digitizing the farm-to-store network. Consumers get fresh and fully traceable food that is free of pesticides and farmers get a better deal.
“India is the world’s second-largest agriculture market and we produce more than 110 Mn tons of fruits every year. However, we see broken supply chains, massive wastage, gluts, and shortages both geographically and over time. We plan to fix this broken channel between farm-fresh fruits and the end-user with a low-cost but modern supply chain solution that can ensure fresher and higher quality products across the country,” says Shobhit Gupta, Founder & CEO, Superplum.
Superplum started operations in 2020 and currently employs 70 people. Over the last year, it has delivered more than 1000 tons of fresh produce through the Covid induced shutdowns. Its container systems have traveled more than 150,000 kilometers and the company has worked with farmers across 15 states. With significant plans to expand its footprint, Superplum endeavors to hit the top 12 cities of the country in the coming 2-3 years and eventually leverage its brand internationally as well.
The company is fortunate to have some of the brightest names in Silicon Valley as early investors. These include Steve Jurvetson of Future ventures, earlier DFJ ( Tesla, Baidu, Hotmail, SpaceX), Dan Rose of Coatue Ventures and earlier Facebook, Mark Siegel of Menlo ventures ( Uber), Kabir Misra of Softbank/ RPS ventures, Curtis Macnguyen of Ivory Capital, Ron Snyder ( Flextronics, Crocs, Codigo) and Binny Bansal of Flipkart.
Source: Business World