Agritech Startup Clover Raises $5.5 Million

Clover, a greenhouse agritech platform, bags over $5.5 million in Series A funding from Omnivore, besides its existing investors Accel and Mayfield. Clover, utilizing its platform, partners with farmers across India and markets premium quality, branded, greenhouse-grown & fresh produce through B2B and B2C channels. While the company was still dealing underhand, Accel and Mayfield invested in Clover’s seed round back in December 2018.

Clover’s business model focuses majorly on demand-led cultivation, a managed farm network, and full stack agronomy. Demand-led cultivation means that Clover grows high quality, consistent, and traceable fresh produce for specific and predictable client demands. The managed farm network of greenhouses spreads across peri-urban and rural areas surrounding urban consumption zones, thereby ensuring freshness and reducing spoilage. Clover provides an entire gamut of agronomy solution to the greenhouse farmers in the network, improving yields and standardizing output quality.

Headquartered in Bangalore, Clover was co-founded by Avinash BR, Gururaj Rao, Arvind Murali, and Santhosh Narasipura. Prior to Clover, Avinash has worked as a venture investor with Aavishkaar and holds an earlier experience of almost a decade working across engineering and corporate strategy roles at Bosch. Gururaj priorly has worked in general management and analytics roles for Myntra, CallidusCloud, and Info Edge. Earlier staying in Gulf, Arvind has worked in various sales

management roles while Santhosh worked in his family’s manufacturing business. Commenting on the occasion, Avinash, Co-Founder of Clover says, “We are thrilled to partner with Omnivore, Accel, and Mayfield as we scale our operations across multiple metro areas. This additional funding will help to accelerate the growth of our managed farm network, support our entry into new cities, and diversify our B2B and B2C fresh produce offerings.”

By leveraging peri-urban greenhouses, Clover can deliver the highest quality vegetables and fruits to B2B and B2C consumers in India’s largest metro areas

Expressing his trust on the funding made, Mark Kahn, Managing Partner of Omnivore says, “We believe that Clover is building India’s first fresh produce supply chain adapted to the challenge of climate change. By leveraging peri-urban greenhouses, Clover can deliver the highest quality vegetables and fruits to B2B and B2C consumers in India’s largest metro areas. Omnivore is excited to support Clover in the coming years as they scale to new heights.”

Vikram Godse, Managing Partner at Mayfield, also poises, “Clover operates in the highly fragmented but large agriculture market of India. By using cutting edge technology, systems, and processes, the Clover team, led by Avinash, is disrupting the agriculture value chain for fruits and vegetables. This not only brings about economic benefits to Clover's B2B customers but also ensures significantly improved quality of produce is delivered to the end B2C consumer.”

Prashanth Prakash, Partner at Accel, likewise avers “Clover is transforming the perishables supply chain to better serve the new-age Indian consumer who values high quality produce. We look forward to the journey with a team that has a deep understanding of this space.”