Lending, but not to farmers: Indian agritech’s identity crisis

On May 8, agritech startup Arya.ag announced its results for the year ended March 2025 (FY25). According to a statement from the company, its net revenue grew 27%, year-on-year, to Rs 447 crore. Notably, Arya’s profit after tax (PAT) for FY25 jumped to Rs 32 crore, up from Rs 19 crore in the previous fiscal. According to data from startup intelligence platform Tracxn, the company has been profitable since FY23.

This traction has seen Arya emerge as one of the best-funded agritechs in the country, having raised equity funding worth $112 million, according to Tracxn. Its last funding round—a $29 million Series C fundraise led by Blue Earth Capital in July 2024—saw its valuation peak at $325 million.

However, while the company still calls itself a “grain commerce platform”—providing warehousing facilities for farmers to store their grain and an online marketplace for farmers and traders to buy and sell grains—it now looks more like an agri-fintech startup. Prasanna Rao, the company’s co-founder, tells The CapTable that Arya draws close to 40% of its revenue from embedded financing alone. 

“We offer storage services for grains and also originate loans on behalf of banks, for which we earn a fee. We classify such activities under service-based revenue. Any instance where we provide financing or facilitate financial transactions for others is also recognised as part of our service income,” says Rao. He adds that the company started financial services around 2017-18, after obtaining a non-banking financial company (NBFC) licence from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).