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

Co-founder and CEO Shashank Kumar talks about agritech, the opportunities and challenges accompanying it and the startup’s path to profitability.

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 …

Author

Pradip K. Saha

Pradip is a co-founder at The Morning Context and leads our newsletters vertical. He has previously worked at The Ken as a staff writer, at Mint as an assistant features editor and the Deccan Chronicle as a copy editor. He works with a slew of expert newsletter writers across subjects and domains. His own writing spans the gig economy, farmers caught in the crossfire of technology, global warming and parents trapped in the edtech wave. Some of his best stories have come at the intersection of technology and human endeavour.

Editor, Newsletters

pradip@mailtmc.com

Delhi