DeHaat turned village shops into two-way agri hubs serving 1.5 million farmers

India's roughly 100 million small farmers bargain from a weak position: village shops sell inputs dear and middlemen set produce prices. DeHaat's co-founder Shashank Kumar, an IIT-Delhi alumnus from a Bihar farming family, saw the same gap from both sides — unhappy farmers and institutional buyers struggling to procure directly — and started the company to close it.

The design put distribution first: DeHaat recruited village micro-entrepreneurs to run local centres, each covering 600-800 farmers within 3-5 km. Orders for 4,000+ agri-input products arrive by app, helpline or in person and are fulfilled the same day; the same centres aggregate corn, wheat, rice and vegetables and supply them to over 500 bulk buyers — retail chains, e-commerce firms, FMCG giants and food processors.

Advisory is free and delivered through AI crop databases, local-language apps and helplines for farmers without smartphones. DeHaat earns only from transaction cuts on inputs bought and produce sold, which aligned its revenue with farmers actually getting value — and made the unit economics strong enough to keep expanding.