Digivriddhi Technologies (DGV), a dairy industry focused neo-banking start-up, announced today that it has raised a US$3.1 million Pre-Series-A round from Info Edge Ventures and Omnivore. Through its assisted digital platform, DGV has chosen to focus on India’s 75 million dairy farmers, providing them access to formal banking and world-class financial services.
DGV is currently working with some of India’s leading co-operatives, dairy unions, and their respective milk co-operative societies and farmers, by providing them access to payments, liabilities, and asset products through its partnership with Federal Bank. The Indian US$145 billion dairy sector is amongst the largest in the world; it contributes over 4 per cent to national GDP, 25 per cent to Agri GDP, and engages over 100 million stakeholders.
Ragavan Venkatesan founded DGV in 2019. He was previously part of the founding team at both IDFC Bank and National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), where he played a critical role in building and rolling out Aadhaar-enabled Payment Services. He was also instrumental in building the Government of India’s direct benefit transfer (DBT) platform. DGV’s senior management team includes former RuPay Card founding member, and Jio Payments founding member, Mukesh Ranjan, former NPCI HR Lead, Ravi Singh, and former Business Lead at VISA Processing Services, Sorabh Mehta.
Speaking on the investment, Ragavan Venkatesan, Founder and CEO, DGV, said, “We are delighted to welcome Info Edge Ventures and Omnivore to lead our first institutional round. Info Edge Ventures’ experience in scaling digital marketplaces, and Omnivore’s deep experience in agritech, will allow us to create an unmatched full-service platform for dairy farmers.”
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Kitty Agarwal, Partner, Info Edge Ventures said, “Indian dairy industry is the largest dairy market globally at US$145 billion, engaging more than 75 million dairy farmers. Despite the huge size of this industry and its importance to our livelihoods, dairy farmers lack access to basic financial services and even struggle to access cash conveniently. DGV is building a neo-banking platform for these dairy farmers by digitising the entire payment stack using Aadhaar, National Payment Switch and Micro ATM technology with plans to build various financial products customised to credit, insurance and other needs of these farmers. We are very excited to partner with Ragavan who is extremely passionate about bettering the lives of these dairy farmers and bringing much needed financial inclusion to them.”
Jinesh Shah, Managing Partner, Omnivore, said, “We would be hard-pressed to find an entrepreneur better suited, or equipped, than Ragavan to take on a problem of this magnitude and complexity. We are excited to partner with Ragavan in his mission to provide class-leading financial services to the 100 million stakeholders in India’s dairy sector.”
Shalini Warrier, Executive Director & Business Head- Retail, Federal Bank, said, “Federal Bank’s partnership with DGV is another step towards expanding financial inclusion in the country. Under this arrangement, we are providing API Banking services across payments, liabilities, and relevant asset products to dairy farmers in Gujarat. DGV’s execution model is unique and aids the re-imagining of financial access to farmers. We intend to replicate this model in other parts of the country, and are confident that this collaboration with DGV, will revolutionise the dairy neo-banking space.”
