DayaTani Obtains Initial Funding of IDR 36 Billion Led by Ascent Venture Group

Startups agritech DayaTani obtained initial funding in the form of financing amounting to $2,3 million (around IDR 35,7 billion) led by Ascent Venture Group, as well as participation from Northstar Ventures, BRI Ventures, and Gentree Fund.

DayaTani was founded in September 2023 by Ankit Gupta (former founder of FarmGuide) and Deryl Lu (ex Vegetablebox) who develop services end-to-end into small-scale agricultural ecosystems to increase crop yields.

"This investment shows confidence in DayaTani's business model and technology. We are committed to improving Indonesian farmers through innovative technology and partnerships," said Deryl Lu in his official statement.

It is known that the agricultural sector is a large sector with a contribution of 13% to national GDP and absorbing 29% of the workforce. This sector is also experiencing significant development considering that agriculture is a sector that is difficult to digitalize.

"Northstar excited to contribute to their efforts, playing a role in improving the well-being of the region's most vulnerable communities," Northstar wrote on its official LinkedIn page.

DayaTani Solutions

DayaTani is currently operating several research and agricultural sites on the island of Java for horticultural crops and food crops, such as rice, chilies, potatoes and shallots. This research was conducted to understand the influence of crop yields including establishing SOP practices in the region.

"DayaTani is building a semi-bionic agronomist agency that has access to all the relevant tools and technologies to solve problems in agriculture," said Ankit Gupta.

Some of the solutions developed are: chatbot LLM. This feature is already active on the field agent app and farmers' WhatsApp. Boots This is called being able to understand questions in regional languages, either through text or speech. In addition, this bot is said to be able to diagnose plant problems with high precision and produce custom recommendations.

Quoted from its official website, DayaTani noted that it has been able to manage a research and agricultural site covering an area of ​​50 thousand square meters with an increase yield 30% to 350 farmer partners in a short time since first operating.

According to the plan, his party plans to install more than 100 IoT devices throughout Java and create a network of weather stations within one year. This network will provide precise, location-specific weather information and weather warnings that are more relevant to farmers.

The agricultural sector is still of interest to VCs in Indonesia to be involved in transformation through digitalization. This transformation is a step in overcoming challenges in the field, such as capital, access to markets and crop yield performance. Throughout 2023, several startups will be recorded agritech Indonesia which received funding included Goodbye, Kora, and Rize.