Clover Ventures raised more than $18 million (about ₹148 crore) from Accel, Omnivore, Mayfield and IvyCap Ventures to convince Indian households to pay a premium for greenhouse-grown vegetables sold under the brand Deep Rooted. In March 2025, after almost seven years, three changes of business model and a 57% single-year revenue collapse, the company shut down.
That is the contradiction at the heart of Clover: a founding team that fixed a real problem in Indian agriculture, built farm networks that genuinely lifted grower incomes, and still could not build a business around it that outside capital would keep funding. What follows is what the filings, the funding announcements and the shutdown notice actually show, in the order it happened.
Quick facts
| Company | Clover Ventures Private Limited (consumer brand: Deep Rooted) |
| Founded | 2018, Bengaluru (founders regrouped in the city in 2016) |
| Founders | Avinash B R, Gururaj Rao, Arvind Murali and Santhosh Narasipura |
| Business | Greenhouse-grown fresh produce: full-stack agronomy for partner farmers plus B2B, D2C and quick-commerce distribution |
| Latest FY revenue | ₹34.37 crore (about $3.6 million) in FY24, down 57% from FY23 (Entrackr, March 2025) |
| Latest FY loss | ₹52.21 crore in FY24, up from ₹47.07 crore in FY23 (Entrackr, March 2025) |
| Listed | Not listed. Ceased operations in March 2025 |
| Last valuation | Reported $35-40 million post-money after its September 2022 funding round (Entrackr, September 2022) |
| Key shareholders | Accel (largest stakeholder), IvyCap Ventures, Omnivore and Mayfield (Entrackr, March 2025) |
What they do
Clover Ventures ran a full-stack agronomy operation for greenhouse farmers in and around Bengaluru, Hyderabad and, for a period, Chennai: it supplied planting material and know-how, guided what partner farmers grew and when, and then graded, packed and sold the produce onward. It sold that produce through three overlapping channels over its life: business-to-business accounts such as cloud kitchens, fine-dining restaurants and modern retail; its own direct-to-consumer app and delivery operation under the brand Deep Rooted, launched in Bengaluru in April 2020; and, in its final years, through quick-commerce platforms as it tried to rebuild a wholesale channel (The Better India, November 2020; Krishi Jagran, September 2020; Entrackr, March 2025).
The origin
The four founders — Avinash B R, Gururaj Rao, Arvind Murali and Santhosh Narasipura — were childhood friends from Bengaluru who had scattered into conventional careers; Avinash had been a venture investor at Aavishkaar before he returned to the city around 2016 (AgroPages, February 2020; YourStory, July 2020). Their first idea was a coffee estate. It went nowhere. Narasipura then offered up family land near Bengaluru, and the group tried conventional vegetable farming on it, running into the problems every smallholder in India knows: unpredictable yields, no visibility into when or where to sell, and almost no technology in the loop (Geektrust, February 2022).
Avinash’s pitch to the other three was deliberately narrow: could they grow a crop to a buyer’s specification inside a controlled greenhouse, and then simply send it to that buyer, cutting out the mandi and the middlemen in between. They started on one acre. By early 2018 that had grown to ten acres, and Clover Ventures was incorporated the same year with the first institutional customers already lined up in Bengaluru’s restaurant trade (YourStory, July 2020; Forbes India, April 2021).
The struggle years
The first real test came within two years of the seed round. In March 2020, the national COVID-19 lockdown shut every hotel, cloud kitchen and restaurant Clover sold to. More than 70% of the company’s revenue at the time came from that institutional, business-to-business book, and demand for it fell by 70 to 75% almost overnight (Forbes India, April 2021; Entrepreneur India, July 2020). A team that had spent two years building a B2B supply chain suddenly had none of it to sell into.
The company did not fold, but it did not fully recover either — it kept restarting. It launched a consumer brand, Deep Rooted, in Bengaluru in April 2020 to sell the same greenhouse produce directly to households, and for a while that worked: by the account of its own founders, roughly 80% of revenue was coming from this direct-to-consumer channel within about two years of the pivot (Geektrust, February 2022; The Better India, November 2020). But the growth had a cost attached: annual losses rose from about ₹24 crore in FY21 to ₹27.45 crore in FY22 as the company spent heavily on advertising and delivery to build the consumer habit (Entrackr, March 2023).
A second, less-discussed setback followed. In June 2023, Deep Rooted suspended its Chennai operations entirely, pulling back to just Bengaluru and Hyderabad after having expanded to a third city on the back of its September 2022 funding round (Retail Updates, June 2023). And a third pivot came after that: unable to make the pure consumer model work, the company tried to rebuild a wholesale business by selling through quick-commerce platforms. That did not reach meaningful scale either (Entrackr, March 2025).
The turning point
If there was one event that defined Clover’s arc, it was that March 2020 collapse and the pivot it forced. Before it: a company built almost entirely around institutional buyers, with more than 70% of revenue running through restaurants, hotels and cloud kitchens that could vanish as a customer base overnight, and did (Entrepreneur India, July 2020). After it: a consumer brand built from a shelved blueprint in a matter of weeks, reaching roughly 80% of revenue within two years and helping push gross revenue from operations up 3.3 times, from ₹13.3 crore in FY21 to ₹44.34 crore in FY22 (Geektrust, February 2022; Entrackr, March 2023). The pivot worked as a growth story. It did not solve the underlying economics: losses grew alongside revenue in every year for which figures are public, and by FY24 revenue itself had reversed hard.
The money behind it
- Seed, December 2018: undisclosed amount from Accel and Mayfield, the company’s first institutional capital (Global AgInvesting, February 2020).
- Series A, February 2020: $5.5 million from Omnivore, with existing backers Accel and Mayfield also participating, used to enter new cities and diversify produce lines (Global AgInvesting, February 2020; Inc42, February 2020).
- Venture debt, May 2020: about ₹7 crore ($921,750) from Alteria Capital, raised just as the pandemic hit institutional demand (YourStory, May 2020; Geektrust, February 2022).
- Growth round, September 2022: a new round led by IvyCap Ventures with Accel also investing. Sources differ on its size and label: Entrackr’s contemporaneous report described an $8 million Series B (Rs 28.5 crore confirmed from IvyCap alone) valuing the company at $35-40 million post-money; Entrackr’s 2025 retrospective on the shutdown instead describes a $12.5 million round, naming Omnivore and Mayfield as participants alongside IvyCap and Accel (Entrackr, September 2022; Entrackr, March 2025).
- Total raised: more than $18 million (about ₹148 crore) across its funding life, with Accel ending up the largest single shareholder ahead of IvyCap Ventures and Omnivore (Retail Updates, June 2023; Entrackr, March 2025).
- What each backer added: Omnivore brought agri-sector focus and its portfolio network at Series A stage; Accel and Mayfield supplied seed and early growth capital and stayed in through every subsequent round; IvyCap Ventures led the only round raised after the pandemic pivot, backing the Deep Rooted consumer bet specifically (Global AgInvesting, February 2020; Entrackr, September 2022).
- No round after 2022: the company never closed a follow-on after its September 2022 raise. Entrackr reported that, “without a viable business model,” Deep Rooted was unable to secure further funding, which directly forced the March 2025 shutdown (Entrackr, March 2025).
How it makes money
Clover’s model tried to capture margin twice over: once on the farm side, by organising greenhouse growers into a managed network and taking a cut of the uplift its agronomy support created, and once on the produce side, by grading, branding and reselling that output directly to institutional and retail buyers rather than through a mandi. The company itself said this let farmers earn up to three to four times more per acre than open-field cultivation, by its own account, since fresh, demand-matched, greenhouse output commands a premium over commodity vegetables (The Better India, November 2020; Geektrust, February 2022).
The part people got wrong, according to the founders, was assuming this was simply an app-based grocery play. The harder and more expensive work sat upstream: predicting consumption so the right crop went into the ground at the right greenhouse weeks in advance, and running physical logistics — grading, packing, cold chain, delivery within 12 to 24 hours of harvest — for a product that spoils if any link in that chain slips (Krishi Jagran, September 2020; Forbes India, April 2021).
- Money in: sale of graded, branded produce to B2B accounts (cloud kitchens, modern retail, fine dining), to consumers through the Deep Rooted app, and later through quick-commerce platforms.
- Costs out: cost of materials and produce procurement (₹29.76 crore in FY22, more than double the prior year), employee costs (₹15.36 crore in FY22), advertising and promotion to build the consumer brand (₹9.36 crore in FY22, up 3.7 times year on year) and packing materials (Entrackr, March 2023).
- Where the margin sat: in the premium consumers and B2B buyers paid for freshness, traceability and greenhouse quality over open-market produce — a premium that, on the company’s own numbers, never grew fast enough to outrun its acquisition and logistics costs.
- Unit economics: Clover spent about ₹1.63 for every ₹1 of operating revenue it earned in FY22, a ratio Entrackr’s analysis flagged directly (Entrackr, March 2023).
The numbers
Revenue and losses moved together for three straight years, then revenue reversed sharply in the year before the company shut down. Figures below are gross revenue from operations and net loss, in ₹ crore, as reported by Entrackr from the company’s regulatory filings.
| Financial year | Revenue (₹ crore) | Net loss (₹ crore) |
| FY21 | 13.3 | 24.0 |
| FY22 | 44.34 | 27.45 |
| FY23 | 80.97 | 47.07 |
| FY24 | 34.37 | 52.21 |
- FY21 to FY22: revenue up 3.3 times; loss up 14.4% (Entrackr, March 2023).
- FY22 to FY23: revenue up roughly 83% to reach its peak of ₹80.97 crore; loss widened further to ₹47.07 crore (Entrackr, March 2025).
- FY23 to FY24: revenue fell 57% even as losses kept rising to ₹52.21 crore — the year that preceded the shutdown decision (Entrackr, March 2025).
Where the money comes from
The company’s channel mix flipped completely over its life, and that flip is the real story of where its revenue came from at any given point.
- Pre-March 2020: more than 70% of revenue from B2B institutional accounts — restaurants, cloud kitchens and hotels (Entrepreneur India, July 2020).
- By early 2022: roughly 80% of revenue from the Deep Rooted direct-to-consumer channel, a near-total reversal within about two years (Geektrust, February 2022).
- Geography: operations concentrated in two-to-three South Indian cities across its life — Bengaluru and Hyderabad throughout, plus Chennai from its September 2022 expansion until that city’s operations were suspended in June 2023 (Retail Updates, June 2023).
- The surprise: the FY23 revenue peak of ₹80.97 crore came in the same window the company was already pulling out of Chennai — growth and retrenchment were happening at the same time, a sign the underlying model was not yet stable in any single channel or city (Retail Updates, June 2023; Entrackr, March 2025).
- Late-stage pivot: in its final phase the company tried to rebuild a wholesale channel through quick-commerce platforms rather than its own app, but Entrackr reported it “failed to achieve substantial scale there as well” (Entrackr, March 2025).
The risks
- Channel concentration: the business was built around whichever single channel was dominant at the time — B2B pre-2020, then D2C, then quick commerce — and each shift required rebuilding the customer base almost from scratch rather than adding a channel on top of a stable core (Forbes India, April 2021; Entrackr, March 2025).
- Perishability and thin margins: fresh produce spoils fast and competes against an unorganised sector of local vendors and mandis that operate on much lower fixed costs, a structural disadvantage the founders themselves named as a risk to the model (Geektrust, February 2022).
- Widening losses against a shrinking capital base: losses rose in every reported year (₹24 crore, ₹27.45 crore, ₹47.07 crore, ₹52.21 crore across FY21 to FY24) while the company raised only one further round after February 2020, leaving it unable to fund a fourth pivot when quick commerce also failed to scale (Entrackr, March 2023; Entrackr, March 2025).
The takeaway
Clover proved the hard part of its thesis and lost on the easy-sounding part. Getting greenhouse farmers to grow better, more predictable produce was real: the company’s own account of farmer incomes rising three to four times over open-field cultivation was never seriously disputed in anything written about it. What it never settled was who should buy that produce and through which door — restaurant kitchens, a consumer app, or a quick-commerce dark store — and it rebuilt its go-to-market from scratch each time the answer changed. Three pivots in seven years is not agility if none of them is given long enough, or capitalised heavily enough, to prove a durable unit economics story before the next one starts. The lesson generalises past agritech: a supply-side innovation is not a business model until the demand side is picked once and defended.
Frequently asked questions
What did Clover Ventures actually sell
Greenhouse-grown fresh produce, sold to restaurants, cloud kitchens and modern retail under its own name, and to consumers directly through its Deep Rooted app and delivery service, launched in Bengaluru in April 2020 (The Better India, November 2020).
Is Clover the same company as the US payments firm Clover
No. This Clover is Clover Ventures Private Limited, a Bengaluru-based agritech founded in 2018 and backed by Accel, Omnivore and Mayfield; it has no connection to the American point-of-sale payments company of the same name.
How much funding did Clover Ventures raise in total
More than $18 million (about ₹148 crore) across a 2018 seed round, a $5.5 million Series A in February 2020, venture debt in May 2020, and a further round led by IvyCap Ventures in September 2022 (Retail Updates, June 2023; Entrackr, March 2025).
Why did Deep Rooted shut down
Revenue fell 57% in FY24 to ₹34.37 crore while losses rose to ₹52.21 crore, a late pivot toward quick-commerce wholesale failed to reach scale, and the company could not close a follow-on funding round, according to Entrackr’s March 2025 report on the shutdown (Entrackr, March 2025).
When did Clover Ventures shut down
Entrackr reported the shutdown decision on 18 March 2025, citing sources aware of the matter after queries to the company and to Accel went unanswered (Entrackr, March 2025).
Sources
Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).
- Global AgInvesting, “Omnivore, Accel, Mayfield Back $5.5M Series A for Greenhouse-Based Agtech Startup Clover Ventures”, February 2020
- Inc42, “Agritech Startup Clover Bags $5.5 Mn Series A Funding To Tap New Cities”, February 2020
- AgroPages, “Omnivore backs former Aavishkaar exec’s agri-tech startup Clover”, February 2020
- YourStory, “[Funding alert] Greenhouse agritech startup Clover, Alteria Capital”, May 2020
- YourStory, “How four friends built a successful greenhouse farming startup”, July 2020
- Entrepreneur India, “Bypassing Middlemen, This Agritech Relies On Greenhouse Farms To Deliver Fresh Produce”, July 2020
- Krishi Jagran, “An Exclusive Interview with Co-founder of Clover Ventures, Avinash B R”, September 2020
- The Better India, “Bengaluru Agri-Startup Delivers Fresh Veggies, Helps 60 Farmers Quadruple Their Yield”, November 2020
- Forbes India, “Clover: Uprooted to deep rooted”, April 2021
- Geektrust, “[Startups 2.0] Clover Ventures: Leading a Full Stack Agronomy Revolution”, February 2022
- Entrackr, “Exclusive: Agritech startup Clover kicks off Series B round”, September 2022
- Entrackr, “Accel-backed Clover Ventures’ GMV grows over 3X in FY22”, March 2023
- Retail Updates, “Deep Rooted suspends Chennai operations”, June 2023
- Entrackr, “Exclusive: Accel-backed Deep Rooted to shut operations”, March 2025
- Trading Economics, USD/INR exchange rate, September 2026
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