Smart farming startup Beleaf harvests $2m in Seed round

Beleaf, an Indonesian smart farming startup, announced raising $2 million in a Seed funding round led by Jakarta-based venture capital firm Alpha JWC Ventures.

The funding round was also backed by BRI Ventures’ Sembrani Nusantara, MDI-Finch Capital’s Arise, and several prominent angel investors.

Founded in 2019 by Amrit Lakhiani, Beleaf is a smart farming company that aims to use its agricultural expertise and technology to improve the yields and productivity of local farmers and ultimately, improve the livelihoods of farmers across Indonesia.

The company started as a premium hydroponic brand offering multiple varieties of vegetables and fruits, ranging from leafy greens to melons.

With the learnings and experience from managing their own farms, this year Beleaf started to expand its product to technology-enabled farm management.

“What we call ‘Beleaf Operating System (OS)’ is a platform that connects IoT devices, data collection, monitoring, logistics, scheduling and forecasting. The primary objective of the OS is to improve the operations of a farm,” explains Beleaf Founder & CEO Amrit Lakhiani.

“Once our partner farms use Beleaf OS, they will see increases in consistency, productivity and quality of harvest. In addition, they will use less resources, thus promoting higher profits and environmental sustainability,” he added.

Beleaf currently works with 14 farms in West Java spanning over 80 hectares and producing over 70 tons of fresh product per month. Its inhouse brand is supplying 15 supermarkets with 110 outlets, 8 ecommerce platforms, and 10+ restaurants outlets.

With this fresh Seed funding, Beleaf will focus on improving its technology, building a robust team, and doubling down on its resources, including opening more R&D farms and building more farming communities in West Java.

Besides its Farming as a Service side, Beleaf is also expanding its inhouse brand by adding a new mass-market brand, Seikat, to its existing premium one (under the same brand name “Beleaf”), and adding more varieties to its lineup.