Agritech startup Rize raises $31 Mn in Series B round

Sustainable agritech platform Rize has closed a $31 million Series B round comprising a mix of equity and debt from international investors the company announced. The company raised $20 million in equity led by BNP Paribas Asset Management Alts Singapore 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 currently works with 17000 farmers across 50000 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 revenue comes from buying supplies in bulk and selling to farmers with its margins built in. The fresh round comes at a time when South East Asia venture capital funding has all but dried up since the collapse of Indonesian agri tech startup eFishery due to financial misreporting back in 2024. While the debt raise is largely being used to deepen Rize 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. India is being considered as one of Rize new geographies given the size and scale of the market. The main thing we are 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 are talking to people right now and over the next six months we will form an opinion on which is the right market to enter. Should Rize enter India it would start with working with farmers in the south before scaling the business. Sawhney said that a strategic Indian investor could feature in a future round once India entry is confirmed. He added that the sector lacks a proven winner that could reset investor confidence a gap he hopes Rize can close as it scales toward a targeted $100 million in revenue by year three of this round.