Aibono, a platform connecting farmers and customers, has raised $2 million in funding from Rebright Partners, Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Venture Capital and Lesing Artha, a subsidiary of Rianta Capital.

The company uses technology and data science to provide farmers with precision agriculture while also aggregating demand by working with small retailers.

“The prevailing pandemic and its adverse impact on food production, consumption and wastage validate the urgent need for data science and advanced technology intervention to course-correct,” said Audrey Selian, Director of Lesing Artha associated with Rianta Capital.

The startup has onboarded farmers in the Nilgiris belt and supplies hill vegetables, herbs, leafy greens, and organics to retailers and consumers. It claims its data science-driven demand-supply synchronisation helps prevent food wastage and improves agricultural efficiency of farmers specialising in perishable vegetables.

“With this round of funding, we will now invest to scale capacity and increase supply to our existing kirana businesses, expanding to institutional retail as well as making possible direct-to-home supply of super perishables via modern delivery platforms like Swiggy, Dunzo, and Amazon in the next phase of our growth,” said Vivek Rajkumar, founder at Aibono.

In March last year, Aibono raised $2.5 million led by impact fund Menterra Venture Advisors.

“With the government’s focus on opening up farm-gate infrastructure in recent times, we are seeing startups such as Aibono who make full-stack agri-businesses lucrative to invest in,” Takeshi Ebihara, founding general partner of Rebright Partners, said.

Aibono had won the award for Best Social Enterprise in the 2017 edition of The Economic Times Startup Awards. The company, which claims to increase farm yield by using artificial intelligence, provides farmers 100% buy-back at an assured price realisation.