India’s leading Dairy-tech startup Stellapps has completed the first close towards its pre-series C round from various investors. The total size of the round will be USD 18 Mn. Led by global animal nutrition and aquaculture company, Nutreco, the fundraising round saw participation from existing investors including Qualcomm Ventures, Celesta Capital, and ABB Technology Ventures.
Stellapps is an internationally acclaimed farm to consumer dairy digitization service provider, improving productivity and quality, while ensuring end-to-end traceability across the dairy supply chain. The company plans to employ the funds to rapidly scale its traceability network and extend its digital footprint across India.
The Indian market for dairy sector accounts for about 6.5% of India GDP, a market worth about US$225 billion. India is the largest milk producer in the world and contributes to 22% of global milk production. Stellapps’ technology will ensure that farmers gain access to its services like farm improvement, cattle nutrition, credit, and insurance, to deliver assured quality across the dairy supply chain.
“Our vision is to unlock unprecedented value across the dairy supply chain for all stakeholders, especially smallholder farmers,” said Ranjith Mukundan, CEO of Stellapps. “We are on a mission to shift the Indian smallholder farmers into the agripreneur orbit by enhancing productivity, improving quality, and enabling traceability through our smartMoo solutions. The support and confidence of our investors allows us to actualize our vision to enhance farmer income and profitability through a combination of our technology solutions, farm inputs, and market linkages.”
Stellapps was founded in 2011 by five technology industry veterans who believed that IoT could transform rural India. Its award-winning smartMoo technology solutions enhance productivity, milk quality, and enable traceability. By enabling ecosystem partnerships through its online platform, Stellapps empowers farmers by providing access to financial services, quality nutrition, and timely veterinary care. Stellapps’ mooPay FinTech arm facilitates the financial inclusion of smallholder farmers by providing access to digital payments, banking, savings, cash withdrawal, credit, and insurance.
“I am thrilled that Nutreco is investing in Stellapps, a game changing technology for sustainable growth in the Indian dairy market,” Fulco van Lede, CEO of Nutreco said. “Our purpose, Feeding the Future, drives us to invest in innovative technologies that improve the sustainability of our food supply chain. The investment in Stellapps not only supports the farming industry to feed a growing global population in a more sustainable way, but also provides better prospects for smaller farmers.”
Last year, Stellapps was one of two Indian companies featured in the list of Technology Pioneers by the World Economic Forum. The organized milk market is growing at 20% CAGR in India while value-added products are growing at 25% CAGR. Stellapps is scaling rapidly to address the present gaps in the dairy value chain and support farmers with its solutions.
“Stellapps, with its full stack IoT platform for end-to-end dairy supply chain management, is speeding up India’s digital transformation in farming and is also making a significant contribution to sustainability,” said Franziska Bossart, Global Vice President, ABB Technology Ventures. “This aligns fully with ABB’s commitment to sustainable value creation.”
“Stellapps’ full-stack IoT platform, which utilizes Qualcomm® technology, is enabling the digitization of the dairy supply chain, helping improve product quality, production and financing of milk in India”, said Varsha Tagare, Sr. Director, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and Managing Director at Qualcomm Ventures. “We’re thrilled to support their journey towards innovating the dairy industry, including their participation in the Qualcomm Design in India Challenge.”
“The dairy industry needs to provide customers visibility on the various ingredient quality parameters in a traceable way,” said Sudhir Rao, Managing Partner of Celesta Capital. “Technology interventions across the supply chain from ‘Farm to Fridge’ are an imperative, and Stellapps has invested in the end-to-end stack to be able to deliver quality certified milk under their mooMark initiative to discerning buyers across India.”
About Stellapps Stellapps is an internationally acclaimed farm to consumer dairy digitization service provider, improving productivity, quality and ensuring end-to-end traceability across the dairy supply chain. It leverages advanced analytics and artificial intelligence through its full-stack IoT platform to enable dairy ecosystem partnerships with financial and insurance institutions, veterinary services, cattle nutrition providers etc. to drive significant value for each stakeholder including smallholder farmers. Through its customer base which includes all major private and cooperative dairies, Stellapps currently digitizes over 13 million litres of milk worth USD 3.4 million each day and impacts 2.7 million dairy farmers in over 36,000 Indian villages.
The company was originally incubated at IIT Madras and received seed funding from Omnivore, an AgTech focused venture fund, in 2013. In 2017, the company raised a Series A round from Blume Ventures, Venture Highway, Binny Bansal, and 500 Startups. Stellapps raised series B funding in 2018 from Celesta Capital (previously WRVI/IndusAge Partners), alongside the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Qualcomm Ventures, ABB Technology Ventures, Omnivore, Blume Ventures, Venture Highway, and BEENEXT.
About Nutreco Every day, Nutreco’s 12,300 dedicated employees in more than 37 countries across the globe relentlessly pursue our purpose of Feeding the Future in a way that ensures sustainability is front and centre in all we do. Our solutions go beyond nutrition – we provide best-in-class advice and technology to help our customers produce more food, in a sustainable way, to feed our growing population.
With over 100 years of experience, Nutreco is a global leader in animal nutrition through our Trouw Nutrition division, and in aqua feed through our Skretting division. Our NuFrontiers team works to identify, develop and invest in next-generation breakthrough innovations throughout the value chain. In 2020, Nutreco had net revenues of €6.4 billion. The company is a subsidiary of SHV Holdings N.V., a family-owned multinational with net sales of €19.2 billion in 2019.
About ABB Technology Ventures ABB Technology Ventures (ATV) is the venture capital unit of ABB (NYSE: ABB). ATV partners with and invests in breakthrough technology companies aligned with ABB’s goal to write the future of industrial digitalization. Since its formation in 2009, ATV has deployed more than $200 million into startups spanning a range of sectors including robotics, industrial IoT, AI/machine learning, cybersecurity, electric mobility, smart buildings and distributed energy.
About Celesta Capital Celesta Capital is a leading venture capital firm that invests in exceptional entrepreneurs and disruptive technologies that will help shape the future. The management team and investment professionals bring their investment and operational experience to their portfolio companies along with a deep and unmatched network of value-added strategic relationships.
About Qualcomm Ventures Qualcomm Ventures, acting through Qualcomm Ventures LLC or its affiliated entities, has been making strategic investments in technology companies that have the potential to dramatically transform our world since 2000. As a global investor, we look to help entrepreneurs build revolutionary businesses that reshape the world around us.
Qualcomm is a trademark or registered trademark of Qualcomm Incorporated.
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