Connect with:
Friday / November 22. 2024

logo
mobile-logo
HomePosts Tagged "Anil Kumar SG"
Agribusiness, Company News, Finance, Funding, India, Start ups

Prominent banks Kotak Mahindra Bank, Indian Overseas Bank, ESAF and Karur Vysya Bank join hands with Samunnati.

Samunnati, a leading agri value chain enabler company, dedicated to empowering smallholder farmers, has successfully raised Rs 1123 crore in debt funding in first half (H1) of FY25. The highlight of this financial year is the successful onboarding of 14 new lenders, who have contributed around Rs 480 crores, which is a significant milestone in Samunnati’s growth journey. The new lenders include prominent banks like Kotak Mahindra Bank, Indian Overseas Bank, ESAF and Karur Vysya Bank and Impact lenders Blue Earth and Enabling Qapital.

Samunnati’s robust business growth, meaningful impact, and reputation as a reliable partner in rural development have instilled confidence among investors.  Samunnati has also explored Innovative funding routes, such as online bond platforms wherein over 5500 investors have subscribed to Samunnati’s bonds, demonstrating the growing confidence in the company’s mission and financial stability.

Anil Kumar SG, Founder and CEO at Samunnati said, “At Samunnati, our relentless focus on deepening and strengthening the entire agricultural value chain has allowed us to achieve remarkable milestones in just six months of FY24-25. By integrating financial solutions with market access and capacity building, we are creating a robust ecosystem that empowers farmers and FPOs at every stage of the value chain. The funds will enable us to scale further, unlocking greater opportunities for India’s agri-community and bringing us closer to our vision of sustainable growth and rural prosperity.”

He added that despite the rising interest rates and a tightening credit environment, Samunnati has managed to reduce the average cost of borrowings for sanctions by 20 basis points. This reflects the company’s efficient operations and strong creditworthiness.

Samunnati’s impressive financial growth story continues this year also, building on the strong momentum of last year (FY23-24) where it had secured funding totalling $155 million (Rs 1158 Crore) for the whole financial year. During last FY, it had attracted investments from investors like USDFC, Credit Saison, Tata Capital, Poonawalla, Hinduja Leyland Finance, Wint wealth, Altifi, Alteria Capital, and Anicut Capital. 

Prominent banks Kotak Mahindra Bank, Indian Overseas

Agrotech, Company News, Finance, India, IT, Singapore, Start ups

With this deal, finbots.ai’s fast growing client base stretches to 10 countries across APAC and MEA markets while Samunnati strengthens its credit-risk management using world-class AI-enabled platform.

Chennai based Samunnati, India’s largest agri enterprises, today announced signing an agreement with Singapore-headquartered B2B SaaS FinTech finbotsAI, to transform credit risk management using AI. With this, Samunnati becomes the first Agri Enterprise in India to incorporate advanced AI-based solutions into a key pillar of its business, supporting its mission to drive greater financial inclusion for smallholder farmers and agri enterprises. Through this partnership, Samunnati has become the first client of Accel-backed finbotsAI in India.

With creditX, finbots.ai’s AI-powered credit modelling platform, Samunnati will be able to develop high accuracy custom credit models on demand, enabling them to scale their agri and MSME supply chain financing business with reduced risk. Samunnati will also be able to process new applications instantly, resulting in improved efficiency and greater agility in operations.

With this deal, finbots.ai’s fast growing client base stretches to 10 countries across APAC and MEA markets while Samunnati strengthens its credit-risk management using world-class AI-enabled platform.

Samunnati made the decision to sign with finbotsAI after an extensive evaluation via a Proof-of-Concept using historical data. With creditX, finbots.ai was able to reduce model development time from 3 months to 4 days with a significant increase in predictive accuracy, demonstrating potential upsides in revenue and operating efficiencies.

Commenting on the partnership, Anil Kumar SG, CEO and Co-Founder, Samunnati, said, “We believe that innovation is the key to solve the access to finance paradox and to unlocking the potential of Indian agri. The partnership with finbotsAI aligns perfectly with our vision of leveraging technology to serve our customers better and contribute to the growth of the Indian Agri.”

Sanjay Uppal, Founder & CEO, finbots.ai commented, “We are proud to make our foray into an exciting market like India with an industry leader in Samunnati. We have seen enormous success in enabling lenders in Southeast Asia and Africa to safely lend to new segments and accelerate financial inclusion and are confident our transformative AI platform, creditX, will have a similar impact in India. We are seeing creditX become a preferred option for lenders globally, and this deal reinforces the desire for cutting-edge technology solutions that solve legacy challenges.”

With this deal, finbots.ai’s fast growing client

Company News, India, Interaction, Start ups

  The two-day event to host 170+ lighthouse FPOs from across the nation.

Samunnati, one of India’s largest agri enterprises, is hosting one of its kind flagship conclaves with 170+ lighthouse FPOs from across the country. The two-day conclave-themed Building a Resilient FPO Ecosystem will be held in Hyderabad between June 23 and 24, 2023. Samunnati believes that collectivization is the bedrock of larger and deeper socio-economic transformation, and this flagship is envisaged to be a unique platform for top-performing FPOs to learn, share and grow together.

The event ‘for the FPOs, and by the FPOs’ aims to create recognition for those making a positive, sustainable, and long-lasting impact on farmers’ livelihoods. The conclave will give a platform to the chosen FPOs to narrate their stories of struggles, success and share their learnings with the rest of the FPO ecosystem at large, inspire them to become thriving commercial enterprises and ultimately benefit the farmers of India.

The conclave will feature carefully curated panel discussions around 4 key themes: “Addressing the ‘access to finance’ paradox”, “Opening FPO mindset to AgTech Innovations”, ‘Access to Markets – Opportunities & New developments’ and ‘Climate Smart Practices & Regenerative Agriculture’.

Eminent Panelists such as S Ramesh – CEO, Nabkisan, Balakrishnan, Vrutti,CEO, Ashish – Chief Strategy Officer, Garuda Aerospace, Ananya Ramakanth, UNESCO, MGIEP, Tushar Devidayal, Devidayal Solar Solutions, Ramanjaneyalu,- Centre for Sustainable Agriculture (CSA) will be joining their respective panels to share valuable insights and thoughts for the benefit of the FPOs and other ecosystem stakeholders. All panels will have equal representation from FPOs who have done well in the themed areas.

In addition to panel discussion eminent speakers like Dr Shaik N Meera Director ICAR-ATARI, C S Reddy, APMAS, Shireesh Joshi, ONDC, Arun Raste, NCDEX will be delivering speeches themed broadly as “Building Resilient FPOs, digitally”.

Tentpole event of Conclave is the Gala evening on 23rd June, where the Chief Guest MR Muthukumar, Group CFO at Olam Group Limited and CEO – Operations at Olam Agri, Singapore will address the audience around the theme Making FPOs Sustainable and Profitable. Following the same the ‘State of Sector Report 2023 – Farmer Producer Organisation in India’ published by NAFPO will be launched. Anish Kumar, Managing Director, Transforming Rural India Foundation, will dive deep into Highlights & Key Implications for the year ahead.

Speaking at the conclave attended by important value chain stakeholders in addition to policymakers, government, industry experts, and ecosystem players including startups, Anil Kumar SG, Founder & CEO, Samunnati said “This is first of its kind congregation of top performing FPOs in the country who are the torchbearers for the entire ecosystem. The idea is to use this congregation as a platform to discuss and exchange ideas that made them successful and take them far and wide for the benefit of the entire ecosystem. This will be a great enabler for the nascent FPOs in Agri-ecosystem in the country.”

The conclave will be hosted at Kanha Shantivanam, Hyderabad which in itself is unique in many ways, including the fact that it is a worldwide headquarters of Heartfulness Foundation, set in a sprawling 1000+ Acre green campus.

  The two-day event to host 170+

Agrotech, Interaction, Opinions

 By Anil Kumar SG, Founder and CEO, Samunnati

Indian agriculture is cruising on the IT superhighway fueled by increasing digitisation, leading to low cost of acquiring data on everything from land records, topography, soil conditions, to crop development, weather-related data collected by drones and satellites. Application of technologies has also introduced new funding opportunities for investors, and startups, which are now striving to tackle the major challenges that farmers face. 

India’s agriculture and animal husbandry sector demonstrated remarkable resilience even during the COVID-19 pandemic. Valued at $370 billion, the sector continues to be the principal source of income for over 40 per cent of the population and contributes a fifth of the country’s GDP (FY 2021). But the sector has been plagued for long by chronic structural issues and inefficient commodity value chains, since 86 pe cent of India’s farmers belong to the small and marginal category.

India still loses close to 40 per cent of its horticulture production mainly due to fragmented and disconnected supply chains, poor post-harvest management, lack of processing facilities, lack of connectivity via roads, absence of scientific storage during distribution, and so on. Farmers neither have access to timely information nor actionable advice and price signals do not reach them in time. Hence, overall, the agri commodities supply chains are operating at sub-optimal capacities.

Role of innovations and technology

Despite chronic issues such as low literacy levels, poor digital literacy, inadequate infrastructure and lack of access to formal financial systems, India has made huge progress on all these fronts in the last few decades. Farmers adopt those technologies or innovations that are simple to understand, easy to use, and give demonstrable results on the field.

Scale-neutrality is another important factor that is vital to ease the technology transition for farmers, especially, the use of digital tools. The COVID-19 pandemic in fact, contributed towards pushing farmers towards the ‘digital advisory’ model. Many Indian AgTech companies currently providing innovative products for enhancing traceability, cutting wastage in supply chain, real time weather monitoring or pests and disease alerts, are helping the farmers, mainly smallholders, get connected to the wider ecosystem and vice versa.

Several AgTech players support farmer collectives (Farmer Producer Organizations/ Farmer Producer Companies) through digitisation. Recently, the Indian government also launched an initiative to establish 10,000 farmer-owned cooperatives by 2024. When FPOs are coupled with e-commerce B2B and B2C platforms at the front end, commodity supply chains transform into demand-driven and market-oriented value chains by eliminating inefficient processes and intermediaries. FPOs can facilitate faster adoption of productivity-boosting technologies by leveraging economies of scale and building the necessary infrastructure. All these are slowly but steadily helping the commodity value chains become lean, and efficient.

Innovation-led growth

Among all the issues, credit remains the most important for a farmer. Equally important is for farmers to have access to formal financial sources to avoid exploitation by indiscriminate agents or money lenders. Easing access to finance will help risk-averse farmers invest in better quality inputs, and technologies, which will ultimately enhance their incomes. Tech-driven fintech companies are creating innovative products and services to suit those who traditionally remained ‘unbankable’ for long in the agri value chains, mainly the smallholder farmers. Synergistic partnerships are critical and evolution of newer concepts like Co-lending arrangements wherein traditional banks are partnering with the new-age, digitally driven fintech NBFCs, which can lead to enhanced financial inclusion to help the underserved and the unserved like MSMEs, and tier 3, 4 cities. 

To read more click on https://agrospectrumindia.com/e-magazine

 By Anil Kumar SG, Founder and CEO,