YSBFB Invests in Farmers Fresh Zone to Support Rural Growers

KOCHI:
Multichannel marketplace platform Farmers Fresh Zone (FarmersFZ) under Kerala Startup Mission (KSUM) has raised an investment of an unspecified amount from Yunus Social Business Fund Bengaluru(YSBFB) that supports social businesses.

As an AgriTech D2C founded in 2016, FarmersFZ bridges the gap between rural farmers and urban consumers by providing healthy, premium-quality and pesticide-free vegetables from fields to the table within 24hours of harvest.

Pioneered by Nobel laureate Prof Muhammad Yunus, YSBFB’s joining FarmersFZ, which grew by 400 per cent during the pandemic period, is a boost to the startup’s efforts for a social cause and a recognition to its commitment, according to Pradeep P.S, Founder and CEO of FarmersFZ. “We will use the fund to facilitate the growth and infrastructure, which enhances our working model, and thus benefits our famer community and their livelihoods,” he said, revealing that YSB has done a deep analysis and study on the impact of FarmersFZ in society.

YSBFB MD & CEO Suresh Krishna, hailing FarmersFZ for being able to unlock better earnings for the farmers, said his company’s the team is aiming to expand the model across southern India. “We will be replicating it especially in the tier-2 cities,” he added.

Leading angel investor Nagaraja Prakasam said FarmersFZ’s ‘Know your farmer’ feature enabled by proprietary traceability tech facilitates the startup to provide small-scale farmers better livelihoods by helping them get more value for their produce. “Our endeavour is to bring food safety in agri-supply chain for a billion along with hygienic and nutritional food with this concept: from local farmer to local customer,” said Prakasam, who advised and built Kisan Mitra, national digital platform with Principal Scientific Advisor Office to Government of India and is Investor Director of FarmersFZ.

FarmersFZ connects more than 2,000 farmers, being able to increase progressive farmers’ income level by 15-20%.

KSUM is the nodal agency of the Kerala government for entrepreneurship development and incubation activities in the state.