Agricultural inputs startup Gramophone has raised $1 million in pre-Series A funding led by InfoEdge. The startup works with farmers, providing them with agronomy services and the right inputs during the entire cropping cycle.
Delhi-based agritech startup Gramophone was Started by IIT Kharagpur graduates. This is the company’s second round of funding. With this round of funding the team aims to increase its reach to a million farmers in the next six to 12 months, and build innovative tech products customised to solve individual farmer needs.
Gramophone had earlier raised undisclosed funding from Ravi Garikipati, Chief Technology Officer, Flipkart; Ajith Pai, Director, Green Earth (agri supply chain company); Sanjay Ramkrishnan, Ex. Senior Director and Head Product Marketing, Flipkart; Pradeep Kumar Mishra, Director Engineering, Tribune Digital Ventures; Nitin Agarwal, VP, Wave Crest Group; and Ashutosh Saxena, Principal Software Engineer, Deem.
Gramophone works with farmers and provides them agronomy services and right inputs during the entire cropping cycle, at their doorstep. Gramophone has a toll-free number, where the farmer can give a missed call and receive a call-back from a Gramophone Agriculture expert giving him advisory on his crop and also recommending suitable products.
The farmer can also place an order at the call centre or through the Gramophone App. The app has information about various crop diseases and nutrition in pictorial format for easy identification by farmers; it also lists suitable products.
Kitty Agarwal, from Info Edge said, “We have invested in Gramophone because it has a great team working on an innovative concept. They are solving problems of real India by helping farmers in improving their livelihoods and awareness. Rural India is the next frontier of internet where the impact can be tremendous.”
Co-founder and CEO of Gramophone, Tauseef Khan said, “Gramophone’s Agronomic Intelligence provides the best farm management solutions to farmers by leveraging the power of image recognition, soil science, smart crop selection, and personalised information-led cropping system.”
The team claims to have received more than 60,000 calls and has enabled farmers to produce more from their land. Their technology and product innovations have improved productivity by 20 percent to 30 percent, going up to 50 percent improvement in many cases.
