Harvesting Farmer Network raises $4 million from Chamath Palihapitiya’s Social Capital

• ByStartupStory     |    August 26, 2022

Harvesting Farmer Network (HFN), India’s largest agriculture technology platform, has raised $4 million in funding from Social Capital, a Silicon Valley-based technology investment firm led by Chamath Palihapitiya. This is HFN’s first institutional round, which will be used to contact India’s more than 120 million smallholder farmers and to investigate the potential in India’s rural marketplaces.

HFN was founded to eliminate friction between farmers and customers, initially by connecting them directly on Twitter. It assists smallholder farmers in India (defined by the UN as farmers with less than 2 hectares of land) in increasing their revenue by providing them with a collective bargaining platform.

HFN’s Founder and CEO, Ruchit G Garg, stated: “HFN’s mission is to assist farmers in reaching their full potential by decreasing inefficiencies throughout the agriculture value chain. Simple and readily available technologies such as WhatsApp and Twitter have enabled us to form enormous data-driven farmer cooperatives, allowing farmers to negotiate better rates for farm inputs and more competitive product pricing. Our farmer-first approach has enabled us to establish unrivalled trust with our farmer partners, laying the groundwork for long-term success. We will be able to accelerate our growth and scale our platform with the help of Social Capital as we strive to provide possibilities to India’s 120 million smallholder farmers.”

Jay Zaveri, Partner at Social Capital, stated, “In our more complex geopolitical world, and in the face of a rapidly deteriorating climate crisis, there is an urgent need for expanded and improved food security. India is one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, and we’re delighted to collaborate with HFN to provide a safe, secure, and empowering platform to India’s more than 120 million smallholder farmers. Through HFN, we hope to provide Indian homes with access to high-quality farm goods while also enabling farmers to develop a profitable livelihood.”

About Harvesting Farmer Network

Harvesting Farmer Network (HFN) is a non-profit organization situated in Chandigarh, India. During the Covid-19 outbreak, Ruchit G Garg, who had worked in the US for over a decade with companies such as Microsoft, moved to India to deal with smallholder farmers and started the company.

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