Startup Deep Dive : Samunnati — the 00M raise that closed at 0M, four years late

In November 2021, Samunnati mandated Kotak Investment Banking and InCred MAPE to raise $100 million in a new funding round. Nearly four years later, that round had closed at just ₹381 crore — about $39.7 million at ₹96 to the dollar — less than half the original target, even as the Chennai-based agri-value-chain platform swung from a ₹129.7 crore loss in FY23 to a ₹21.8 crore profit in FY24.

Samunnati calls itself India’s largest agri-enterprise platform, a claim it makes on its own website rather than one verified by an independent ranking. What is verifiable, from filings and reported numbers, is a business that moved ₹2,434 crore of gross revenue in FY25, lends to farmer collectives most banks will not touch, and still runs on wafer-thin margins that a single deferred-tax entry can wipe out.

Quick facts

What they do

Samunnati sells credit and market access to the two ends of India’s agricultural value chain that formal finance usually skips: farmer producer organisations (FPOs) and community-based agri-collectives on one side, and the agri-enterprises, wholesalers and retailers who buy from them on the other. It calls this its AMLA approach — aggregation, market linkage and advisory — layered on top of straightforward lending. The company says it has worked with more than 30,000 FPOs and reaches roughly 10 million farmers across more than 100 agri value chains in 23 states (company profile). On the demand side, its agri-commerce arm, branded Samunnati Agro, buys and sells agricultural commodities in bulk, using its knowledge of the supply side to reduce counterparty risk for both farmers and buyers. The two halves of the business — lending and trading — are run through separate group entities but reported together in its consolidated numbers.

The origin

Anil Kumar SG spent close to three decades in rural, retail and agri banking before founding Samunnati, including a stint at ICICI Bank and a later role as co-founder and trustee of IFMR Trust, running IFMR Rural Channels. In 2004 he went to Manila to study at the Asia Institute of Management, intending to move from banking into academics. He instead came across a biography of Muhammad Yunus, the Bangladeshi microfinance pioneer, and it reframed the problem he had been circling for years: Indian farmers were not simply short of collateral, they were locked out of markets that could have made that collateral irrelevant. A decade later, in 2014, he incorporated Samunnati Agro Solutions Private Limited in Chennai and set up its first office at the IIT Madras Research Park in Taramani, with an NBFC licence in hand from the outset. The insight that shaped the company was not “lend more to farmers” but “fix the market these farmers sell into” — advisory, aggregation and market linkage bolted onto credit, rather than credit alone.

The struggle years

The company’s own account of its founding smooths over how uncertain its first years were, and the record shows at least three distinct points where the model had to be rebuilt or the numbers went the wrong way.

• The branch-lending model failed within a year (2015). Samunnati started as a branch-led model lending directly to individual farmers, modelled on conventional retail agri-banking. Elevar Equity backed the company in 2015 as its first institutional investor; according to Elevar’s own account of the deal, within about six months of that investment Anil Kumar SG had concluded the branch model did not work and needed to pivot to lending through farmer producer organisations instead — a structural rebuild of the core product, not a tweak (Elevar Equity case study).
• Asset quality deteriorated into a large loss (FY23). For the year ended March 2023, Samunnati Financial Intermediation & Services reported a loss before tax of ₹129.7 crore, against disbursements of ₹2,775.8 crore that year — a loss large enough that the company’s own investor communications and trade press flagged FY24 explicitly as a “return” to profitability, implying FY23 was a genuine low point (The Hindu BusinessLine, 7 May 2024).
• The 2021 fundraise target was never met on its own timeline (2021–2025). In November 2021, Samunnati mandated Kotak Investment Banking and InCred MAPE to raise $100 million in a Series E round (BusinessToday, 25 November 2021). The round did not close anywhere near that size or on that timeline: by 27 May 2025 — more than three-and-a-half years later — cumulative Series E equity stood at ₹381 crore, roughly $39.7 million, built up in smaller tranches including a ₹42.5 crore infusion from Agri-Biz Capital Delaware LLC (Entrackr, 2025).

The turning point

The clearest before-and-after in Samunnati’s numbers sits across two fiscal years. In FY23, the company posted a loss before tax of ₹129.7 crore. A year later, in FY24, it reported a profit before tax of ₹21.8 crore — a swing of roughly ₹151 crore in a single year (The Hindu BusinessLine, 7 May 2024). The company’s own explanation was more disbursement, not less risk: loans and working-capital credit through Samunnati Financial rose 27% to ₹3,525.6 crore in FY24 from ₹2,775.8 crore in FY23, while sales through its agri-commerce arm, Samunnati Agro, grew 31% to ₹2,210 crore from ₹1,694 crore. Gross transaction value across both businesses hit ₹5,835 crore in FY24, its highest ever at that point, up from ₹4,400 crore in FY23. In other words, the company did not shrink its way to profit — it grew through the loss year and out the other side, on the same underwriting model that had produced the loss twelve months earlier. That is a real turnaround, but it is a thin one: the FY25 numbers, discussed below, show how quickly it can reverse again.

The money behind it

Samunnati’s capital stack has two very different layers: named equity rounds from a small set of impact and growth investors, and a much larger, recurring pool of debt from banks and NBFCs that funds the actual lending book. The two are often conflated in secondary trackers, which is why this piece keeps them separate.

• Series A, 2015: ₹20 crore, led by Elevar Equity, which became Samunnati’s first institutional backer and pushed the pivot to FPO-focused lending within months of investing (Elevar Equity case study; company profile).
• Series B, 2017: ₹30 crore, from IFMR Capital Finance, per Samunnati’s own company timeline.
• Series C, 2018: ₹50 crore, per Samunnati’s own company timeline.
• Series D, 2019: $55 million (about ₹387 crore), led by Nuveen — the investment arm of US-based TIAA — with existing investors Elevar Equity, responsAbility and Accel Partners also participating (YourStory, May 2019; Samunnati press release).
• Series E, mandated November 2021 at up to $100 million via Kotak Investment Banking and InCred MAPE (BusinessToday, 25 November 2021), but closed in tranches over more than three years, reaching cumulative equity of ₹381 crore (about $39.7 million) by 27 May 2025, including a ₹42.5 crore tranche from Agri-Biz Capital Delaware LLC (Entrackr, 2025).
• Private credit, June 2024: $16 million from Blue Earth Capital, aimed at improving access to finance for farmer collectives and agri-enterprises (Blue Earth Capital press release, June 2024).
• Green bond, December 2024: ₹50 crore, described as India’s first 100%-agricultural green bond, arranged by Symbiotics with Northern Arc Capital as primary subscriber, earmarked for climate-smart agriculture (YourStory, December 2024; Symbiotics Group).
• Debt mobilisation, FY25: ₹2,300 crore raised from a lender base expanded to 46 institutions, including 12 new lenders such as State Bank of India, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Indian Overseas Bank, Federal Bank, Karur Vysya Bank and ESAF Small Finance Bank (YourStory, April 2025).

Samunnati has not disclosed a formal valuation at any of these rounds. Figures circulating on funding-tracker sites for its valuation and cumulative “total funding raised” are inconsistent with each other and are not confirmed by the company or by regulatory filings, so none is reproduced here.

How it makes money

Samunnati earns in two structurally different ways, and the split explains why its reported “revenue” looks large but its margins look thin.

• Lending income: interest and fees on working-capital and term loans to FPOs, community business organisations and agri-enterprises, funded by the debt raised from banks and NBFCs listed above. This is classic NBFC economics — the spread between what Samunnati pays lenders and what it charges borrowers, minus credit losses.
• Trading/procurement income: Samunnati Agro buys agricultural commodities from FPOs and sells them on to agri-enterprises and buyers, booking the transaction value as revenue but passing most of it straight through as procurement cost. In FY25, procurement costs alone were ₹2,084 crore — about 85% of the group’s total expenditure of ₹2,463 crore (Entrackr, 2025).

The part people get wrong is treating the ₹2,434 crore FY25 “gross revenue” figure as if it were high-margin fee income. Most of it is commodity value moving through the trading book at close to cost; the actual economic engine is the smaller lending business, where the real spread — and the real risk — sits. That is also where finance costs bite hardest: those costs rose 42.9% to ₹215.8 crore in FY25 from ₹151 crore in FY24, even as overall revenue grew just 1.2% (Entrackr, 2025) — a classic squeeze where the cost of capital rises faster than the business it funds.

The numbers

Figures below are drawn from RoC-filed financials reported by Entrackr and from The Hindu BusinessLine’s reporting on Samunnati’s own disclosures; unit is ₹ crore. Where a metric was not available in the sources reviewed, the cell is marked “n/a” rather than estimated.

The FY25 line worth sitting with is the gap between profit before tax (₹5.3 crore) and profit after tax (a loss of ₹74 crore). A ₹74 crore deferred-tax expense converted a barely-positive pre-tax year into a large net loss (Entrackr, 2025) — a reminder that “profitable” and “cash-generative” are not the same claim, and that a company operating this close to break-even has almost no cushion against a single accounting adjustment.

Where the money comes from

Samunnati’s FY25 revenue was heavily concentrated in one segment, which is the surprise for a company usually described as a lender first.

• Trading and allied activities: approximately 90% of FY25 revenue, or about ₹2,205 crore, run through the Samunnati Agro commodity-trading business (Entrackr, 2025).
• Financing and lending: the remainder, roughly ₹229 crore, or about 10% of FY25 revenue — the smaller line by revenue share, even though it is the business the NBFC licence and most of the founding story are built around (Entrackr, 2025).
• Geographic and channel reach: the company states a presence across 23 states and more than 100 agri value chains, working with over 30,000 FPOs and roughly 10 million farmers, alongside about 3,500 to 4,000 agri-enterprise buyers on the demand side (company profile).

The practical read: Samunnati is, by revenue, mostly a commodity trading business with a lending arm attached, even though the lending arm is what makes it a regulated NBFC and what defines its risk profile to investors and rating agencies.

The risks

• Thin, cost-sensitive margins in the trading business. With procurement costs running at roughly 85% of total FY25 expenditure, small movements in commodity prices or logistics costs can move the bottom line disproportionately; FY25 revenue grew just 1.2% while finance costs rose 42.9%, showing how quickly a rising cost of funds can outrun top-line growth (Entrackr, 2025).
• Earnings volatility from tax and accounting items. The FY25 swing from a ₹5.3 crore pre-tax profit to a ₹74 crore post-tax loss, driven by a deferred-tax charge, shows that the company’s pre-tax operating result leaves almost no margin for error once accounting adjustments are applied (Entrackr, 2025).
• Sector-wide agri-credit cyclicality. Rating agency ICRA has warned that a weak monsoon raises rural credit risk and cash-flow stress for agricultural borrowers generally (Business Standard, July 2026) — a mechanism directly relevant to an NBFC whose loan book is built almost entirely on farmer-collective cash flows tied to crop cycles and monsoon timing.

The takeaway

The lesson in Samunnati’s numbers is not about agriculture specifically — it is about what happens when a company builds its growth story on a metric that is not the same as its profit engine. Gross transaction value and gross revenue kept climbing every year Samunnati has reported, and by some readings that looks like an unbroken growth curve. But revenue built mostly on commodity pass-through, at 85% procurement cost, tells you almost nothing about whether the smaller lending business underneath it is getting healthier or riskier. The company’s own FY23-to-FY24 turnaround shows growth and profitability can move together; its FY25 tax-driven loss shows how fast a thin pre-tax margin can flip back the other way. Anyone reading a growth number in isolation — a founder pitching it, an investor underwriting it, a journalist reporting it — should ask what fraction of that number is pass-through before treating it as evidence of health.

Frequently asked questions

What does Samunnati do?

Samunnati is a Chennai-based agri-value-chain company combining an NBFC that lends to farmer producer organisations (FPOs) and agri-enterprises with a commodity-trading arm, Samunnati Agro, that buys from and sells to those same value chains.

Who founded Samunnati and when?

Anil Kumar SG, a career banker who previously co-founded IFMR Trust, founded Samunnati in 2014 in Chennai, incorporating it initially as Samunnati Agro Solutions Private Limited.

Is Samunnati publicly listed?

No. Samunnati is a private company. It has listed debt instruments, including NCDs and a ₹50 crore green bond issued in December 2024, on the BSE debt segment, but it has not listed equity shares.

How much funding has Samunnati raised?

Samunnati has raised named equity rounds from Series A (2015) through Series E (closed at ₹381 crore cumulative by May 2025), backed by investors including Elevar Equity, Accel, responsAbility and Nuveen, alongside separate and much larger annual debt facilities from banks and NBFCs — for instance, ₹2,300 crore in debt in FY25 alone. The company has not disclosed a combined “total funding raised” figure, and third-party trackers disagree on one, so no single number is stated here.

Is Samunnati profitable?

It depends on the year and the measure. Samunnati moved from a ₹129.7 crore pre-tax loss in FY23 to a ₹21.8 crore pre-tax profit in FY24. In FY25 it posted a small pre-tax profit of ₹5.3 crore, but a ₹74 crore deferred-tax charge turned that into a net loss of ₹74 crore for the year.

Sources

Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).

• Entrackr, “Samunnati posts Rs 2,434 Cr GMV and Rs 5 Cr PBT in FY25”, January 2026
• Entrackr, “Samunnati completes Rs 381 Cr in Pre-Series E funding”, 2025
• The Hindu BusinessLine (via samunnati.com and PressReader), “Samunnati back in the black for FY24 on higher disbursals to Agri units, FPOs”, 7 May 2024
• BusinessToday, “Agri value chain Samunnati appoints bankers for $100 mn growth fundraise”, 25 November 2021
• YourStory, “Agri-fintech startup Samunnati raises $55M Series D funding from Nuveen, Elevar Equity, Accel”, May 2019
• Samunnati company press release, “Samunnati Raises INR 387 Crores Series D Funding From Global Investment Manager, Nuveen And Existing Investors”, 2019
• Blue Earth Capital, “Blue Earth Capital provides $16 million credit financing to Samunnati”, June 2024
• YourStory, “Samunnati issues Rs 50 Cr green bond to boost climate-smart agriculture”, December 2024
• Symbiotics Group, “Symbiotics launches first 100% agricultural Green Bond in India with Samunnati”, December 2024
• YourStory, “Samunnati raises Rs 2,300 Cr in FY25; expands lender base”, April 2025
• Elevar Equity, “Samunnati — aspiring to define the next generation of Indian agriculture” (case study)
• Business Standard, “Agri-tech firm Samunnati’s gross transactions cross Rs 10,000 crore” and “Weak monsoon raises rural credit risks; cash flow stress likely: ICRA”, July 2026
• Inc42, Samunnati company and captable profile, accessed September 2026
• Tracxn, Samunnati company profile, accessed September 2026
• Samunnati.com, company “About Us” timeline and profile pages, accessed September 2026

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