With the aim of empowering smallholder farmers in South and Southeast Asia, Striders Corporation (HQ: Tokyo, Japan, President: Ryotaro Hayakawa) executed its first impact investment by participating in the Pre-Series A fundraising of Agrithmics Pvt. Ltd. (HQ: Sri Lanka, CEO: Prashanth Premakumar). The investment was executed via the fully owned subsidiary, Striders Global Investment Pte. Ltd. (HQ: Singapore, Director: Nelaka Haturusinha).
Agrithmics is a SaaS solution provider that aims to digitize the supply chain from the farm to the agriculture businesses. The company’s purpose is to enrich the agricultural industry in the South and Southeast Asia by driving process excellence through digital and fintech solutions. The company’s platform has AI and IoT features embedded to eliminate the malpractices and pilferage within the supply chain. The platform is also embedded with the fintech solutions to enable the real-time payment management and disbursement of cash. Currently the platform is deployed in tea, fruits, vegetables, and dairy industries in Sri Lanka and has nearly 50,000 registered farmers, with an annual GMV of nearly $30 million in 2020. In 2020, Agrithmics also won the Microsoft Emerge X Pitch Competition in APAC
The company is also developing a credit scoring system for the smallholder farmers, using the data collected via the platform. As a result, the smallholder farmers will get access to the formal and low-cost financial services while the financial institutions could lower the risk of Non-Performing Loans. Speaking about the investment and the expansion plans, CEO of Agrithmics – Prashanth Premakumar said that “With a strong tech team driving our products from Sri Lanka, we intend to roll out our solutions across other emerging market such as Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, etc. and the investment from Striders will greatly help us achieve our goals and take the business to the next level.”
President of Striders Corporation - Ryotaro Hayakawa commented that, through this first impact investment, Striders want to uplift the lives of unbanked smallholder farmers by providing them with a platform that will give them to low-cost financing facilities (unlike the traditional loan sharks which charges very high interest rates), which will help them to come out of poverty. As per, Nelaka Haturusinha of Striders Global Investment, Striders plan to expand the above impact by supporting Agrithmics to expand into regional markets like Indonesia, where Striders has a strong presence.
Agrithmics is backed by a strong group of investors such as Dialog Axiata Digital Innovation Fund, BOV Capital & DFCC Bank (Sri Lanka). Investment into Agrithmics is the second co-investment of Striders along with BOV Capital, which was founded by Mr. Rajan Anandan and Mr. Prajeeth Balasubramanium.
Contact:
Striders Corporation (Public Relations Team)
Tel: (+81)-3-5777-0212