By Agroshift, a Bangladesh-based agritech startup, raised US$1.8 million in a pre-
seed round co-led by Shorooq Partners and Anchorless Bangladesh.
Agritech startup raises $1.8m pre-seed, largest in Bangladesh.
Agroshift, a Bangladesh-based agritech startup, raised US$1.8 million in a pre-
seed round co-led by Shorooq Partners and Anchorless Bangladesh. The company
said the raise marks the country’s largest for its stage.
The round also saw participation from Ratio Ventures, Sketchnote Partners, and
Demand Curve founder Julian Shapiro.
Agroshift is an agricultural supply chain platform that helps farmers sell produce
through demand aggregation, sourcing, and delivery.
Agroshift sets up digital ordering systems in factories, which workers order
produce from. The firm aggregates these orders to farmers, then drops off the
items at partnered factories.
The company is currently focused on two sales channels: ready-made garments
(RMG) factories and neighborhood mom and pop stores.
Qazi Bouland, co-founder and CEO of Agroshift, told Tech in Asia that by selling
directly to end-consumers, they can reduce costs for consumers while still making
sure farmers are fairly paid. He added that current supply chains mark up prices
between 70% and 150% of the cost price.
Bouland added the firm currently has operations in five factories, each with an
average of 10,000 workers. They plan to reach up to 100,000 workers by year’s
end.
In line with this, part of the new capital will go towards improving Agroshift’s
platform as well as adding social commerce features like community group buying
and gamification inspired by China agriculture ecommerce platform Pinduoduo to
drive usage.
Rahat Ahmed, founding partner and CEO at Anchorless Bangladesh, said
Agroshift’s model for domestic supply chain optimization held tremendous
opportunity to drive value for farmers and consumers, especially as consumers
struggle with rising costs.
Early boost
Bouland co-founded Agroshift in March 2022 alongside Rameez Hoque and
Diptha Saha.
Before starting Agroshift, Bouland worked in the corporate line, most recently as
Digital Platforms head at one of the largest telcos in Bangladesh, Banglalink.
Meanwhile, Hoque and Saha had startup backgrounds: Hoque was co-founder of
factory workforce management firm Kinship AI, while Saha previously led dairy
marketplace Khamar-e.
In February 2022, Agroshift was selected as one of the six winning teams in
clothing retail giant H&M’s “Stitch for RMG” innovation challenge.
The win made it easier for Agroshift to access larger factories, given H&M’s
position in the market. “We are already operational across two supplier
factories of H&M and have more in the pipeline to roll-out, now with the
fundraising complete,” said Hoque.
Bangladesh’s garment industry reportedly accounts for more than 10% of the
country’s gross domestic product, employing around 4.4 million people.
Moving forward, Hoque said that operations across the supply chain, across
sourcing, quality assurance, and logistics, are also becoming more complex at
scale. “We intend to continue developing tech tools to optimize processes, embed
automation where possible and build data models for faster decision-making,” he
said.
Agroshift plans to optimize their supply chain management solutions for
inventory and logistics, and build a farmer management solution. They also seek
to grow its current team of 15 people, adding staff in the tech and supply chain
teams.
(news was posted in: TECHINASIA on 25 Oct 2022)
