In September 2022, Bijak’s own investors told Forbes India that the agri-commodity marketplace was moving over ₹300 crore of grain, pulses, spices and edible oil every month on its app, a run rate that put annualised gross merchandise value at roughly ₹3,500 crore. The audited numbers for that very financial year, filed with the Registrar of Companies and reported by Entrackr, show gross revenue of ₹807 crore for FY23 (April 2022 to March 2023) — well under a quarter of the headline figure.
That gap between the trading-floor story and the chartered accountant’s ledger is the real subject of this piece. Bijak set out to digitise the “first mile” of India’s agricultural trade without replacing the traders who run it, raised roughly $34.5 million from Sequoia’s Surge, RTP Global and Bertelsmann along the way, and then watched its own gross merchandise value fall for two straight years even as losses crept back up. What follows is what the filings, the funding documents and the founders actually said, with the gaps in between left as gaps.
Quick facts
| Company | Bijak |
| Founded | April 2019, Gurugram (Forbes India, September 2022) |
| Founder(s) | Nukul Upadhye (CEO), Jitender Bedwal, Nikhil Tripathi, Mahesh Jakhotia, Daya Rai |
| Businesses | B2B agri-commodity trading marketplace (Bijak Mandi, Vyapaar, Global and Just Fresh apps) plus working-capital lending and logistics for traders |
| Latest FY revenue | ₹557 crore total income in FY25, about $58 million at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 (Entrackr, April 2026, citing RoC filing) |
| Latest FY profit/loss | Net loss of ₹61 crore in FY25 (Entrackr, April 2026) |
| Listed | Private — not listed on any exchange |
| Market value / last valuation | ₹1,225 crore (~$163 million) post-money after its Series B, as per regulatory filings (Entrackr and Krishijagran, February 2022); no priced round has been publicly disclosed since |
| Key shareholders / CEO | CEO Nukul Upadhye; largest backers are Sequoia Capital India’s Surge, Bertelsmann India Investments, Omidyar Network India and RTP Global Advisors |
What they do
Bijak runs a business-to-business marketplace for agricultural commodities — grains, pulses, spices, edible oils and fresh produce — that connects farmers, village-level aggregators, traders (called aadatiyas or commission agents in mandi parlance), wholesalers, food processors and retailers on a single app. Rather than buying and reselling produce itself, Bijak mostly sits between existing intermediaries, giving them real-time price discovery across regions, a digital ledger for deals that used to be settled on paper, and add-on services such as freight aggregation and short-term working-capital loans so a trader is not forced to wait for a buyer to pay before restocking. The company operates the offering through four apps aimed at different trade lines — Bijak Mandi, Vyapaar, Global and Just Fresh — and says its network spans more than 1,200 regions across 27 states and over 100 commodities traded daily (Forbes India, September 2022).
The origin
Bijak was incorporated in April 2019 in Gurugram by five co-founders: Nukul Upadhye, Jitender Bedwal, Nikhil Tripathi, Mahesh Jakhotia and Daya Rai (Forbes India, September 2022). Upadhye, who became chief executive, grew up in a farming family in Dhar district, Madhya Pradesh, before an engineering degree from BITS Pilani and an MBA from the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia (Forbes India, September 2022). Bedwal, an IIT Delhi engineering graduate, had previously built a smaller enterprise-software venture before turning to agri-trade.
The founding bet was deliberately conservative: rather than trying to cut out the traders and commission agents who dominate India’s mandi system, Bijak chose to sell them software and financing instead. Co-founder Nikhil Tripathi told Forbes India that traders had built domain expertise over generations, and that leveraging that skill mattered more than replacing it. The pitch to early backers Omidyar Network India and Sequoia Capital India’s Surge programme was that India’s “first mile” of agriculture — the point where a farmer’s produce first changes hands — was almost entirely undocumented, leaving both price discovery and credit access broken for the smallest players in the chain.
The struggle years
Bijak’s setbacks show up less as dramatic near-death moments and more as a business that repeatedly grew faster than it could turn into cash.
- Funding drought, 2020–2022: after closing its Series A in April 2020, Bijak did not close another priced round until February 2022 — a gap of roughly 22 months (Krishijagran, January 2022, citing regulatory filings). Reports at the time said the company had been in discussions to raise as much as $35 million at a $220–250 million valuation; the round that actually closed was $19.37–20 million at a post-money valuation of ₹1,225 crore, about $163 million (Krishijagran and Entrackr, February 2022) — a materially smaller outcome than what had reportedly been sought.
- Weak unit economics in FY22: for the year ended March 2022, Bijak spent ₹1.95 to earn every ₹1 of revenue and posted an EBITDA margin of around -83%, on gross revenue of just ₹62.5 crore against a net loss of ₹55 crore (Entrackr, November 2022 and May 2024, citing RoC filings).
- Two straight years of shrinking scale, FY24–FY25: after gross revenue (GMV) spiked to ₹807 crore in FY23, it fell to ₹732 crore in FY24 and then to ₹551 crore in FY25 — a cumulative decline of roughly 32% from the FY23 peak — while the net loss widened again to ₹61 crore in FY25 from ₹55 crore in FY24 (Entrackr, May 2024 and April 2026, both citing RoC filings).
- Sharp headcount reduction: data tracked by Tracxn shows Bijak’s headcount at 21 employees as of 31 August 2025, a roughly 90% year-on-year decline (Tracxn company profile, accessed September 2026) — a third-party estimate rather than a company disclosure, but consistent with a business pulling back after two years of falling GMV.
The turning point
The clearest inflection point in Bijak’s early life sits around its Series A. The round closed on 20 April 2020 (Entrackr, April 2020) — less than a month after India’s nationwide COVID-19 lockdown had shut down physical movement across the country, including the mandis where most agricultural trade still happened face to face. Bijak’s valuation jumped roughly 7.6 times in that round, from about ₹80 crore at seed to ₹613 crore (about $82 million), on $12 million raised from RTP Global, Omidyar Network, Sequoia’s Surge, Omnivore Partners, AL Trust and Tempo Ventures (Entrackr, April 2020). At the time of that round, Bijak said it was live in 22 states and roughly 550 regions, trading around 80 commodities (Entrackr, April 2020). By September 2022, those numbers had roughly doubled to 27 states, over 1,200 regions and 100-plus commodities, with monthly transaction value reported at more than ₹300 crore (Forbes India, September 2022). The pandemic did not create Bijak’s product, but the timing put a badly-needed digital alternative in front of traders exactly when the physical mandi system briefly stopped functioning.
The money behind it
- Seed — September 2019: $2.5 million from Sequoia Capital India’s Surge programme, Omidyar Network India and Omnivore Partners — the first agritech bet for both Sequoia India and Omidyar Network India (AgFunderNews, September 2019).
- Series A — 20 April 2020: $12 million (about ₹90.76 crore) led by RTP Global, with Omidyar Network, Surge, Omnivore Partners, AL Trust and Tempo Ventures participating; post-money valuation about ₹613 crore (~$82 million), up 7.6x from the seed valuation (Entrackr, April 2020; AgFunderNews, April 2020).
- Series B — February 2022: $19.37–20 million (about ₹144.2 crore), led by Bertelsmann India Investments (~₹98.64 crore / $13.15 million) alongside Omidyar Network (~₹22.8 crore / $3 million), RTP Global (~₹15.2 crore / $2 million), Sequoia’s Surge and Better Capital; post-money valuation of ₹1,225 crore (~$163 million) (Entrackr and Krishijagran, February 2022; Agritimes, February 2022).
- Total disclosed priced-round funding: about $34.5 million across the three rounds above (Seed $2.5M + Series A $12M + Series B ~$20M) — in line with the $34.5 million/five-rounds total tracked by aggregator Thekredible, which likely folds in small extensions.
- ESOP pool: the board approved an employee stock ownership plan worth about ₹65 crore in March 2021, with a four-year vesting period and no lock-in (Entrackr, March 2021).
- No confirmed round since February 2022. As of September 2026, more than four-and-a-half years later, no subsequent priced round appears in Entrackr, Crunchbase or Tracxn’s public tracking — an unusually long gap for a company that had raised twice within its first three years.
- Valuation conflict: some data aggregators list Bijak’s “current” valuation at $180–200 million, above the $163 million post-Series-B figure tied to a disclosed regulatory filing. This piece uses the filing-based $163 million figure and flags the higher aggregator estimates as unconfirmed.
How it makes money
Bijak’s core model is a commission on trade it facilitates, layered with a smaller set of financial and logistics services around that trade.
- Trade commission (the core engine): Bijak takes a discovery/brokerage fee, reported at roughly 1–5% of transaction value, each time a buyer and seller close a deal through its apps.
- Working-capital lending: the platform connects traders and aggregators with short-term (weekly/fortnightly) credit and also earns a lead-generation or referral commission by routing borrowers to banks, NBFCs and fintech lenders.
- Logistics aggregation: Bijak pools freight demand across traders to cut empty or partial truckloads, taking a cut on arranged logistics.
- Interest income: roughly ₹6 crore in both FY23 and FY25 came from interest on deposits and current investments — a small but recurring line (Entrackr, May 2024 and April 2026).
- Where the margin actually sits: the part easy to miss is that the vast majority of Bijak’s reported revenue is not fee income at all — it is the pass-through value of the commodities changing hands on its books. In FY23, the cost of procuring agricultural commodities was ₹791 crore against total expenditure of ₹860 crore, or 92% of all costs; in FY25 it was ₹538 crore of ₹618 crore, or 87% (Entrackr, May 2024 and April 2026). That structure means Bijak’s headline “revenue” behaves like the gross merchandise value of a trading book, not a marketplace’s take rate, so profitability depends far more on managing commodity-price and counterparty risk than on typical software-marketplace economics.
The numbers
Figures below are gross revenue/GMV and net loss as reported to the Registrar of Companies and covered by Entrackr; all amounts in ₹ crore.
| Fiscal year | Gross revenue / GMV (₹ crore) | Net loss (₹ crore) |
| FY22 (Apr 2021–Mar 2022) | 62.5 | 55 |
| FY23 (Apr 2022–Mar 2023) | 807 | 46 |
| FY24 (Apr 2023–Mar 2024) | 732 | 55 |
| FY25 (Apr 2024–Mar 2025) | 551 | 61 |
- FY23 was an outlier year: GMV rose 13x over FY22, and the loss actually narrowed 16.4% even as the business scaled, with expense-per-rupee-of-revenue improving from ₹1.95 to ₹1.07 and EBITDA margin improving from about -83% to about -4.7% (Entrackr, May 2024).
- FY24 and FY25 reversed that trend: GMV fell in both years (down 9% in FY24 from the FY23 peak, then a further 25% in FY25), while the loss widened again to ₹61 crore in FY25, with expense-per-rupee-of-revenue at ₹1.12 and EBITDA margin around -10.1% (Entrackr, April 2026).
- As of 31 March 2025, Bijak reported current assets of ₹47 crore, including a cash and bank balance of ₹21 crore (Entrackr, April 2026).
Where the money comes from
- By revenue line: sale of agricultural commodities through the platform’s apps made up over 99% of total revenue in both FY23 and FY25, with the remainder coming from interest income (about ₹6 crore in each of those years) and smaller commission/logistics fees (Entrackr, May 2024 and April 2026).
- By app/product line: Bijak Mandi and Vyapaar cover domestic grain and mandi trade, Bijak Global is positioned for cross-border trade, and Just Fresh targets fruit-and-vegetable trade — a segmentation by commodity type rather than by geography (company app listings, accessed September 2026).
- By geography: as of September 2022, the network spanned 27 states and more than 1,200 regions, up from 22 states and about 550 regions at the time of its April 2020 Series A (Forbes India, September 2022; Entrackr, April 2020) — no more recent state/region count has been publicly disclosed.
- The surprise: despite years of press coverage framing Bijak around trader counts, transaction volumes and monthly run-rates, its own regulatory filings show that almost none of its revenue is fee-based in the way a typical marketplace’s “take rate” would suggest — it is overwhelmingly the value of commodities it books as it facilitates trade, which is why GMV and revenue move together rather than revenue growing faster than GMV.
The risks
- Thin, volatile margins on a pass-through book: with commodity procurement costs running at 87–92% of total expenditure across FY23–FY25, small swings in agricultural prices, quality disputes or payment delays can move Bijak’s bottom line sharply, as shown by EBITDA margin swinging from roughly -83% (FY22) to -4.7% (FY23) to -10.1% (FY25) (Entrackr, November 2022, May 2024, April 2026).
- Counterparty and credit risk from lending: Bijak extends short-term working-capital credit to traders and aggregators and records doubtful-debt costs among its disclosed expense lines; because its borrowers are small traders whose incomes are tied to volatile crop cycles and weather, loan losses can compound at the same time trading volumes fall, as they did through FY24–FY25 (Entrackr, April 2026).
- Funding and scale risk relative to better-capitalised rivals: as of September 2026, Bijak’s total disclosed funding of about $34.5 million and no priced round since February 2022 compares with far larger war chests at adjacent agri-supply-chain players — Ninjacart has raised more than $370 million at an $815 million valuation (May 2022), and WayCool has raised about $307 million at a valuation of roughly $700 million, per CB Insights company data — leaving Bijak with less capital to defend share in a capital-intensive category even as its own GMV has been shrinking for two straight fiscal years.
The takeaway
Bijak’s founding insight — that India’s agricultural middlemen were worth arming with better tools rather than trying to eliminate — was sound enough to attract Sequoia, Omidyar, RTP Global and Bertelsmann inside its first three years, and to produce a genuine 13x jump in trading activity in FY23. But the same choice that made the platform easy for traders to adopt also meant Bijak’s own revenue would forever look like a commodity trading book rather than a software marketplace: dominated by procurement cost, thin on the fee income that actually funds a technology company, and exposed to exactly the price and credit risk that agri-commodity trading has always carried. The lesson is not that working with incumbents instead of disrupting them was wrong — it is that doing so still leaves a company holding the economics of the industry it entered, and a plan for growth needs to reckon with those economics from day one rather than treating GMV headlines as a proxy for them.
Frequently asked questions
What does Bijak do?
Bijak runs a business-to-business online marketplace that connects farmers, traders, wholesalers, food processors and retailers to buy and sell agricultural commodities such as grains, pulses, spices and edible oils, alongside working-capital lending and logistics aggregation for its trader network.
Who founded Bijak and when?
Bijak was founded in April 2019 in Gurugram by Nukul Upadhye, Jitender Bedwal, Nikhil Tripathi, Mahesh Jakhotia and Daya Rai, with Upadhye serving as chief executive (Forbes India, September 2022).
How much funding has Bijak raised and who backs it?
Bijak has raised about $34.5 million across a $2.5 million seed round (September 2019), a $12 million Series A (April 2020) and a roughly $20 million Series B (February 2022), with Sequoia Capital India’s Surge, Omidyar Network India, RTP Global Advisors and Bertelsmann India Investments as its largest backers (Entrackr and AgFunderNews, 2019–2022).
Is Bijak profitable?
No. Bijak has reported net losses in every fiscal year for which filings are public: ₹55 crore in FY22, ₹46 crore in FY23, ₹55 crore in FY24 and ₹61 crore in FY25 (Entrackr, 2022–2026, citing RoC filings).
What is Bijak’s current valuation?
The last valuation tied to a disclosed regulatory filing is ₹1,225 crore, about $163 million, set at its February 2022 Series B (Entrackr and Krishijagran, February 2022). No priced round has been publicly confirmed since, and some third-party aggregators cite higher, unconfirmed figures of $180–200 million.
Sources
Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).
- Entrackr, “Bijak’s GMV soars 13X to Rs 807 Cr in FY23; controls losses”, May 2024
- Entrackr, “Bijak’s GMV drop 25% to Rs 551 Cr in FY25; losses stand at Rs 61 Cr”, April 2026
- Entrackr, “Sequoia-backed Bijak records Rs 62.5 Cr revenue in FY22, expenses surge 5.5X”, November 2022
- Entrackr, “Exclusive: Bijak scores $12 Mn in Series A; valuation jumps over 7X”, April 2020
- Entrackr, “Exclusive: Agritech startup Bijak raises nearly $20 Mn in Series B”, January 2022
- Entrackr, “Exclusive: Agritech startup Bijak introduces ESOP scheme worth Rs 65 Cr”, March 2021
- Krishijagran, “Exclusive Update! Bijak Agritech Firm Raises Worth $20 Million In Series B”, January 2022
- Agritimes, “Farming tech startup Bijak raises USD 19.4m from Bertelsmann, others”, February 2022
- AgFunderNews, “Sequoia, Omidyar in first Indian agritech bet with $2.5m seed for ag trading platform Bijak”, September 2019
- AgFunderNews, “Bijak nets $12m Series A funding to update India’s ag commodities trade”, April 2020
- Forbes India, “Bijak: Leveraging tech and trader experience”, September 2022
- Tracxn, Bijak company profile (funding and employee-count data), accessed September 2026
- CB Insights, Ninjacart and WayCool company profiles (competitor funding and valuation data), accessed September 2026
Found an error? Write to us and we’ll correct it in the open, dated, on the piece.