Agritech firm DeHaat announced its acquisition of a portion of Freshtrop Fruit. The deal, completed entirely in cash, involves absorbing Freshtrop’s export network, grading, packing, precooling centers, and top leadership team.
This move, as stated by DeHaat, is geared towards enhancing its grape exports from India to global markets. Additionally, it aims to bolster research and development capabilities for cultivating new grape varieties.
“We are super excited about this collaboration to grow the grapes and overall agri-export business together. Each member of the Freshtrop’s founding family, along with the larger team, will continue to remain actively involved in the business, and DeHaat will bring its network and resources for market expansion, development of new grape varieties & technology-led deeper pre-harvest support to the associated farmers,” said Shashank Kumar, co-founder and CEO, DeHaat in the statement.
Freshtrop Fruits Ltd, established in 1992 by Ashok Motiani and his family, specializes in exporting grapes, pomegranates, and mangoes from India to supermarket chains across the UK, European Union, and other countries. The publicly listed company is headquartered in Ahmedabad.
DeHaat, founded in 2012 by Kumar along with co-founders Shyam Sundar Singh, Amrendra Singh, Adarsh Srivastava, and Abhishekh Dokania, initially operated from Patna. The company’s business model involves selling agricultural inputs to farmers, purchasing their produce, and subsequently selling it to bulk buyers. Recently, DeHaat has ventured into exporting agricultural produce.
In the statement, Kumar added, “We established our export business 18 months ago and are today exporting more than 20 agri-produce from India to the Middle East, the UK, and the EU. We see strong synergies around the complementary core competencies between DeHaat and Freshtrop.”
Furthermore, the companies emphasized that their partnership will commence operations during the upcoming grape harvesting season.
This marks DeHaat’s seventh acquisition deal in total and its fourth in the output domain, following the twin acquisitions of YCook India Pvt Ltd and FieldFresh Foods last year, according to the company’s statement.
