Arya.ag, one of India’s largest integrated grain commercial platforms, is in talks with Nigeria for sharing knowledge and technology to set up warehouses for agricultural products and seed finance system, its co-founder and CEO Anand Chandra said.
The engagement will be on a consultancy basis, similar to the one the company did in Ethiopia, he told businessline in an online interaction. However, Arya.ag has no plans to make any investment in Africa, while it plans to go deeper in the 21 States, where it operates in India.
“We are in talks with Africa, but we are very clear that we will not be making investments. In terms of supporting them, we have worked with the Ethiopian government with the help of the World Bank. Our exposure will be restricted to giving knowledge and tech-sharing, nothing else,” said Chandra.
The company thinks that a lot of capabilities that it doesn’t have are required to invest in Africa, besides geopolitical risks. “We have seen most of the people who have gone to Africa burning their capital. So, no investment, no subsidiaries,” he said.
Arya.ag co-founder and CEO Anand Chandra
Going deeper
Arya.ag, which lends against commodities and works with 6.5-7 lakh farmers, has handled over 4.5 million tonnes (mt) of various commodities across 4,000 warehouses in the previous fiscal. It facilitated a total lending of more than ₹12,000 crores across 31 financial institutions. “From our own book, we did ₹2,000 plus crores (last fiscal),” he said.
The company will continue to go deeper in the 21 States it is operating. “Our target is to reach a threshold of 6 million tonnes. So we will go more granular in terms of our warehousing and finance business goals,” said Chandra.
Arya.ag wants to be the “green operating system” for India, wherein whichever agri commodity is produced and goes the consumer, touches the company’s platform somewhere. “It could be through the finance or warehousing or the commerce platform,” he said.
The company caters to two major impact points. First, it lends loans against commodities at locations where people don’t have access to formal institutions. At least 50 per cent of its customers avail of the credit for the first time.
Main competition
Arya.ag provides loan as through its non-banking finance arm Aryadhan with a short turnaround time. Lending is primarily against the agri-commodities that a farmer owns and their security is managed by its another group firm Arya Collateral. Its main competition is with local money lenders, he said.
“We advise the farmers. We help farmers solve two basic issues. One is when to sell, and the other is where to sell,” said Chandra. The organisation works with smaller warehouses that are size agnostic. This helps in reaching production centres with its own non-banking financing, storage and finance services.
The commerce platform, which has registered a turnover of ₹5,500 crore, comes into picture when the farmers decide to sell. They, then, get access to multiple buyers that ensures a better return.
The company can sanction loans against agri commodities within ₹2.5 crore with the commodities being registered as a digital balance in the farmers’ account. “The turnaround time for a farmer from the time he walks into one of our warehouses and walks is less than 30 minutes,” the company’s co-founder and CEO said.
₹40 crore profit
Once a farmer completes the sale of his produce, Arya.ag, which takes care of getting the money from the buyer, closes the loan account and gives back the surplus.
The company works with farmer-producer organisation to identify farmers who need funding. “We go and convince them in terms of the advantages they will have if they store commodities with us,” said Chandra, adding that two critical challenges – turnaround time and loans – that farmers were facing have been tackled by this.
Arya.ag earned a profit of ₹40 crore before tax last fiscal. The earnings were after all expenses and all provisions were taken into account.
Published on October 31, 2025
