Agritech Rize raises $31 million in Series B as mix of equity and debt

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Sustainable agritech platform Rize has closed a $31 million Series B round, comprising a mix of equity and debt from a clutch of international investors.

The company raised $20 million in equity led by BNP Paribas Asset Management Alts, Singapore's sovereign fund Temasek, the Rockefeller Foundation, and Breakthrough Energy Ventures. Rize raised $11 million in debt funding from United Overseas Bank, Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam and the Temasek Foundation.

“The money will be going into deepening our presence in Vietnam and Indonesia,” said company founder and chief executive Dhruv Sawhney in an interview with Mint. “We will also be looking to enter one more geography, and India is on that shortlist.”

The Singapore-headquartered company is focused on decarbonizing rice cultivation across South-East Asia. Rize raised an undisclosed seed round from Wavemaker Impact (now known as 100x100) and Temasek three years ago. In 2024, it raised its $14 million Series A round from Breakthrough Energy, Temasek and GenZero.

Rize currently works with 17,000 farmers across 50,000 hectares in Vietnam and Indonesia. It runs a financing-led model where it supplies farmers with seed, fertilizer and equipment on 150 days of zero-interest credit. The company’s revenue comes from buying supplies in bulk and selling to farmers, with its margins built in.

The company’s fresh round comes at a time when South-East Asia's venture capital funding has all but dried up since the collapse of Indonesian agri-tech startup eFishery due to financial misreporting back in 2024. In April, the company's founder, Gibran Huzaifah, was sentenced to nine years in prison by an Indonesian court.

While the debt raise is largely being used to deepen Rize’s presence in its existing markets, the equity portion is going towards building out its platform, developing artificial intelligence tools for its field agronomists, and enhancing carbon certification self-reporting.

While the company has traditionally been focused on serving rice farmers in South-East Asia, India is being considered as one of Rize’s new geographies, given the size and scale of the market.

“The main thing we're evaluating is seeing if the market fits the model we work on and getting the agri stack where it needs to go,” said Sawhney. “We’re talking to people right now and over the next six months we'll form an opinion on which is the right market to enter.”

However, Sawhney said that should Rize enter India, it would start with working with farmers in the south, before scaling the business. At the same time, it would be a harder business to help achieve scale because of the nature of the rice being farmed in the region.

India's primary rice export is the Basmati variety, which is mostly grown in the north. However, in the south, the Sona Masuri variety is favoured by farmers. “This variety is grown across two to three harvest seasons, which is good, but it has lower exports, so making margins is harder,” Sawhney said.

Regardless, whenever the company does enter the country, it intends to leverage the founder's existing networks to grow. Eventually, India would become its largest revenue driver, whether it enters the market this year or in a couple of years.

Sawhney started a company called WOTU back in 2015, which was eventually acquired by food delivery major Zomato and rebranded as Hyperpure. He also helped launch UPL's agri-tech play, nurture.farm, in 2020 before exiting to launch Rize.

While the new capital is being used for expansion, India is a region that will require it to attract local investors, something it's not actively considering at the moment. "I think it would make sense when we are very clear that we want to enter India, and around that time we can go look at those options," Sawhney said, adding that a strategic Indian investor could feature in a future round once India entry is...