Rural fintech startup Jai Kisan has raised INR 390 Cr ($50 Mn) in its ongoing Series B funding round in a mix of equity and debt. 

New investors – GMO Venture Partners, Yara Growth Ventures and DG Daiwa Ventures and existing investors including Blume Ventures, Arkam Ventures, Mirae Asset, Snow Leopard Ventures, among others invested in the equity funding round. On the other hand, Northern Arc, Alteria and MAS Financial invested in debt fundraising.

Jai Kisan will use the funds to expand its product suite, hire talent and also boost data science and engineering capabilities. 

With the current fundraising, Jai Kisan has secured $85.4 Mn to date. 

“We were struck by the opportunity that Jai Kisan has to help enable better financing to rural Indians. Better credit access can help micro, small and medium enterprises grow their businesses while helping growers afford products to improve their yield and quality,” Erkki Aaltonen and George Roche said from Yara Growth Ventures.

Founded in 2020 by Arjun Ahluwalia and Adriel Maniego, Jai Kisan is a rural India-focussed neo bank that offers credit solutions in online and offline rural commerce environments. It aims to offer full-stack financial services to individuals and businesses in rural areas of the country.

Jai Kisan claims to have an annual loan disbursal run rate of over $220 Mn and clocked a 4x revenue growth in the last 12 months.

In April 2020, Jai Kisan launched a digital lender for rural businesses called Bharat Khata. Under its BNPL credit solution, the startup is said to have added 400% new customers into its base in the last three months. While its Bharat Khata app has clocked over 100K rural businesses and served over 5 Mn individual customers to date. 

Jai Kisan said that it aims to digitise savings, insurance, and payment offerings for its users.

Its cap table includes Mirae Asset, Syngenta Ventures, Arkam Ventures, NABVENTURES, Prophetic Ventures, Better Capital, Blacksoil, Stride Ventures, Trifecta Capital, Astarc Ventures, Harshbeena Zaveri from NRB Bearings and Sanjay Mariwala from OmniActive, among others.

Besides Jai Kisan, some other rural-focussed startups such as Hesa, SarvaGram and 1Bridge  are also working in the space. 

According to a Bain & Company report, India’s rural economy employed 350 Mn people between 2019-20. Agriculture is a significant sub-sector of the rural economy, contributing roughly 37% of total rural GDP between 2019 and 2020.

A host of startups including Boonbox, eSamudaay and Rozana have been also operating in this space.

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Update|1:18 PM

The story has been updated to include funding details of Jai Kisan