‘I’m confident DeHaat will break even in three quarters’

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Editor's note: Shashank Kumar is a busy man. The co-founder and CEO of agritech startup DeHaat is raising a new round of funding. (One week after this interview, news broke that the company had raised Rs 366 crore, or $46 million, in Series E funding led by Belgian investment firm Sofina Ventures.) He is also busy because October and November are harvest time for kharif (summer) crops and also when fields are prepared for sowing rabi (winter) crops—a time when most people at his company are out in the fields to interact with farmers. But then, Kumar has been busy ever since he founded DeHaat in 2012. The Patna-based company, which also has headquarters in Gurugram, serves as a full-stack platform that offers farmers services like distribution of agri inputs, customized farming advice, access to financial services and market linkages. After almost eight years since its inception, the company, built by the engineer turned management consultant turned first-generation entrepreneur, finally hit the growth curve in 2019-20. Today, DeHaat is among a few of the 1,000 agritech startups in India that enjoy an …