Ag-tech start-up Unnati has raised $1.7 million in pre-series A funding from Nabventures Fund, the company said on Monday.

The start-up plans to use the funds to scale up its tech platform and increase its geographical and crop footprint by setting up more partner stores, said co-founder Ashok Prasad, in a statement.

Unnati has a strong network of partner stores for selling agri-inputs and purchasing produce in Eastern, Central and Western India. Besides providing competitively-priced inputs to farmers, Unnati uses its reach to enable farmers to get remunerative prices for their produce by enabling them to access better markets in a fair and transparent manner. It also provides financial services to the farmer besides point-of-purchase farm advisories.

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“Unnati has created a platform to digitalise the major components in the food and agribusiness value chain. The predictive capabilities of the data captured by the platform enhances efficiencies while its transparent processes help in building trust among farmers and FPOs.” said GR Chintala, Chairman, NABARD and NABVENTURES.

“The Unnati team is solving some of the important problems faced by farmers like lack of access to quality inputs at transparent prices and lack of last-mile market linkage to sell produce at competitive prices. The amalgamation of a fintech layer has resulted in customer stickiness. We appreciate the agri input selling and market linkage proposition of the Unnati platform and are happy to support it on its onwards and upwards journey,” said Manikumar S, Chief Operating Offier, Nabventures.

Unnati has previously received funding from angel investors, including Vijay Shekhar Sharma (Paytm), KRS Jamwal, current and former Paytm senior executives Vikas Garg, Shankar Nath, Renu Satti, Gemba Capital, and Ajay Lakhotia. The current investment transaction has also been supported by Sumeet Seraf who acted as advisor for the transaction, the company said.