DeHaat, the leading AgTech platform in India providing comprehensive agricultural services for farmers, announced today that it has entered into a Business Transfer Agreement (BTA) with Freshtrop Fruits Ltd., paving way the company to absorb Freshtrop Fruit’s export network and grading, packing & precooling centers as well as manpower including the top leadership team into its ecosystem. Shashank Kumar, Co-founder & CEO of DeHaat, confirms that this investment aligns with the company’s vision to not only provide impetus to grape exports from India to the globe but also build R&D capabilities to grow new varieties of grapes, offering improved value propositions to farmers across Western India.
Speaking on the development, Shashank Kumar, Co-founder & CEO, DeHaat, says, “The way how Freshtrop has built its relationship with 50+ global retail chains delivering strong business presence across 20+ countries is commendable. Over last 25 years, the ‘Freshtrop’ brand has been synonymous with production of premium fruits in India & has empowered hundreds of growers to start the grape exports journey, something that completely aligns with DeHaat’s vision of being a ‘Farmers First’ organization. We established our exports business 18 months ago and are today exporting more than 20 agri-produce from India to the Middle East, UK & EU. We see strong synergies around the complementary core competencies between DeHaat & Freshtrop. We are super excited about this collaboration to grow the grapes & overall agri-export business together. Each member of the Freshtrop’s founding family along with the larger team will continue to remain actively involved in the business and DeHaat will bring its network & resources for market expansion, development of new grape varieties & technology led deeper pre-harvest support to the associated farmers.”
Founded in 1992 by Mr. Ashok Motiani & his family, Freshtrop Fruits Ltd has been a one of the largest exporters of Grapes & other fruits like Pomegranate & Mango from India to leading supermarket chains in UK & European Union & various other countries for the last over 25 years. In the exports market, ‘Freshtrop’ is the most sought-after brand from India. Since inception, Freshtrop Fruits Ltd has continuously invested in innovative technology and was the first to bring in transformative punnet packing and certifications like Global GAP & BRC for grape exports from India. Freshtrop has been operating 2 state of art pack house facilities in Maharashtra. The partnership with DeHaat will be operationalized from the upcoming Grapes harvesting season.
DeHaat is a homegrown, India’s largest agritech platform serving over 2 million farmers, across 11 Indian states through its exclusive digitized network of 11,000+ Micro Entrepreneurs called ‘DeHaat Centers’ for last-mile delivery as well as aggregation. As on date, DeHaat has more than 1500 product SKUs from over 250 agri-input companies in its basket and is fulfilling 15,000+ input orders per day. On the output front, DeHaat is managing 5000MT harvest per day across 32 crop commodities, with distribution spread across 15+ countries across the globe. The partnership will enable DeHaat to offer its full stack agri services including availability of high-quality inputs, personalized advisory, financing, insurance & access to wider global markets to Freshtrop’s farmer network, enabling seamless information exchange and better value discovery.
Commenting on the acquisition, Ashok Motiani, Managing Director, Freshtrop Fruit Ltd says, “In order to take the business to the next level it is essential to work on development of new varieties of grapes, establish access to other global markets and the domestic market and diversify the product basket for a year-round activity. DeHaat’s strength is in providing quality farm inputs, using technology to provide predictive crop advisory and in its infrastructure for domestic sales & distribution. There is a fundamental alignment of value systems in both organizations of farmer-first approach, respect for everyone in the value chain, maintaining integrity & investing in innovation for further value creation. Hence, we feel that this association would be beneficial to all stakeholders with farmers getting access to new varieties and potential to diversify into other products, customers getting a larger basket of products from an established source, employees getting better prospect through organizational growth and the shareholders getting a good return on their investment.”
This is DeHaat’s seventh M&A overall and fourth in the output domain post the twin acquisitions of YCook India Pvt Ltd & FieldFresh Foods last year as the company aims to leverage the rapidly growing Indian exports market to provide better market access & price discovery to the Indian farmers.
About DeHaat
DeHaat is a technology-based platform offering full stack agricultural services to farmers, including distribution of high-quality agricultural inputs, customised farm advisory, access to financial services, and market linkages for selling their produce. For more information on DeHaat, please visit:
