Domestic Agri-logistics startup received $20 million funding from global investors
Sohan Lal Commodity Management Pvt. Ltd (SLCM), a Delhi-based post-harvest agri-logistics and financing startup, has received $20 million capital funding from Incofin Investment Management of Belgium and ResponsAbility Investments AG of Switzerland. It was secondary purchase of shares by the two firms after the existing investors (Everstone Capital, Mayfield Advisors, Nexus Venture Partners and Emerging India Fund) decided to sell a small stake in the startup. The startup, founded in 2008 by Sandeep Sabharwal, offers various warehousing services such as scientific storage for agriculture commodities, fumigation, testing and certification and funding against storage receipts. The firm offers its services to farmers, processors, traders and commodity exchanges.
Aditya Bhandari, Asia Co-Head for Incofin, said that “They are a fully integrated post-harvest management company. Once the farmer is in the harvest phase, there are a lot of obstacles that follow. Sohan Lal is able to provide various solutions for these problems as it is present across the entire value chain in post-harvest. It is the only company that has a fully integrated approach to this segment”.
The $20 million capital, the fifth round of investment by Sohan Lal, is expected to be used by the firm to scale up its business in domestic and overseas market. In September’15, the company had raised INR100 crore in a round led by Chicago-based Creation Investments Capital Management LLC and existing investor Everstone Capital.