“In my 21 years in this sector, the last year and a half have been the worst I’ve seen,” said Anand Chandra, co-founder of Arya.ag, an agritech company that offers post-harvest services to small farmers. Think warehouse storage for grains and quick loans. Really quick. “Price crashes typically affect individual commodities. This time, it’s happening across the board,” he added.

Agricultural-commodity prices have been at their five-year-lowsEconomistHow grain has gone from famine to feast, with no end in sight. Wheat prices have crashed to Rs 2,600 per quintal from Rs 4,000 two years ago. Rice and soybeans have fared no betterFinancial TimesRice prices plunge to eight-year low after record harvests. This doesn’t bode well for the heaps of grain lying in Arya.ag’s warehouses—slowly but surely depreciating with each price drop.

The company’s business model is simple: store grains for small farmers across the country, and use them as collateral to offer loans. And in doing so, replace farmers’ dependence on local arathiyas (moneylender).

Take wheat farmer Himanshu Upadhyay, for instance. Each time he walked up to the arathiya’s house, the knot in his stomach would tighten. The terms were always the same: 2% interest per month. Miss a payment, and the interest would compound. “Or worse, the moneylender would seize your land,” said the 40-year-old from Uttar Pradesh, who’s been farming for over a decade.

But over the last year, Himanshu has been breathing a bit easier. He still takes loans, but instead of going to the arathiya, he now goes to Arya.ag. Five to seven minutes after his wheat is deposited in the company’s warehouse, his loan is processed, and money is credited to his account. No paperwork. No wait time. All at an interest rate of 12–14%—much lower than what the arathiya charges, though higher than banks’ 9–10%.

Himanshu is the kind of customer traditional banks wouldn’t touch with a stick. But 12-year-old Arya.ag wants to bet on them anyway, and is now valued at over $300 million—raising money from investors such as Omnivore, Blue Earth, and Lightrock—and handles around 2–3% of India’s total grain load across 22 states.

In FY25, Arya.ag’s gross revenue rose 36% to hit around Rs 5,700 crore, with a net revenue of Rs 447 crore, while its net profit jumped a greater 70% to touch Rs 32 crore.