Agritech startup DeHaat is acquiring Freshtrop Fruits’ export business for Rs 77 crore (about $9.3 million), as per a regulatory filing.
The deal, announced on Tuesday, also entails Freshtrop Fruits’ export vertical employees, including its top leadership, moving to Sofina and Temasek-backed DeHaat.
The regulatory filing from Freshtrop Fruits said DeHaat is acquiring its network and grading, packing and precooling centres.
Freshtrop Fruits is a Rs 250-crore business that was founded in 1992 and listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange.
“We clearly foresee building a Rs 1,000-crore export business of fruits and vegetables from India in the next three to four years,” Dehaat founder and chief executive Shashank Kumar told ET.
Kumar said the company has spent about $20 million on acquisitions so far, with Freshtrop Fruits being the largest one.
DeHaat has so far acquired six businesses – Vezamart, Farmguide, Helicrofter, YCook, FieldFresh Foods and Freshtrop Fruits.
The deal marks Dehaat’s move further into the fruits and vegetables’ export business, which it first ventured into with the acquisition of Field Fresh in May 2022.
Field Fresh, a joint venture of Bharti Enterprises and Del Monte Pacific, exports exotic fruits and vegetables to Europe.
DeHaat, largely an agri inputs marketplace, is seeing steady growth in its export business on the output side of the agriculture supply chain.
The company’s export business makes 10% of its overall revenue. “This will become 18-20% post the latest acquisition. The number will grow rapidly, but at a steady state, it will remain at about 25% of the total business,” Kumar told ET.
Freshtrop Fruits has two business verticals – exports and processing. The processing business continues to operate independently with the company.
Dehaat has some 1,950 full-time employees. Under the deal, 45 employees of Freshtrop Fruits’ export business will join the startup.
Dehaat, which commands the highest valuation in the agritech space at over $700 million, has more than 12,000 franchise offline centres and 100 nodes, spread over 120 districts across northern India. It has 2.1 million active farmers purchasing seeds, fertiliser and pesticides, as well as availing financing and insurance-related services.
Kumar told ET that the company is on track to report Rs 2,600-2,700 crore revenue in FY24.
“The Ebitda-level (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation) burn is going to come down from 15% in FY23 to about 6% in FY24,” he said.
In FY23, Dehaat had reported Rs 1996.9 crore revenue and net loss of Rs 1,094.4 crore. In FY22, the numbers were Rs 1,287.6 crore and Rs 1,564.1 crore, respectively.
Source: Economic Times