For any farmer, the harvest is the moment of truth. After a long season of work, you finally see what your toil has yielded. In the corporate fields of Indian agritech, DeHaat just announced its biggest harvest yet: its first-ever profitable year in FY25.

But dig a little deeper past the headline figures, and you’ll find the business is less fertile than it seems.

One of India’s oldest and most prominent agritech startups, DeHaat has spent the past decade building a full-stack model connecting farmers to agri-inputs, advisory services, and market linkages.

And with the profitability, it might also seem that the country’s agritech ecosystem is finally showing some green shoots.

But as we hinted at above, the numbers warrant a closer look.

The INR 369 Cr in profit primarily stemmed from non-cash gains, while operationally the company still reported a loss of around INR 207 Cr, on a revenue crossing the INR 3,000 Cr mark.

The startup is yet to turn fully profitable, and now it hopes that FY26 will be its fully profitable year. It claims to have reached an EBITDA breakeven in Q1 FY26

In contrast, in FY24, the Peak XV-backed company posted a 36% YoY growth in revenue to INR 2,720 Cr, with operational loss of almost INR 245 Cr and a net loss of INR 1,113.1 Cr.

At a time when DeHaat is trying to show that it has turned its fundamentals around, one does wonder whether India’s agritech sector is living up to its potential. Profitability in this sector is rarely straightforward and scaling continues to remain difficult.

In fact, if we look at the revenue over the last few years, DeHaat’s projections and the realities of its financials have not matched. Though its Q4 FY25 financials have not been reported separately, its full-year top-line growth in FY25 was merely 11%, its lowest growth rate in the past few years.

Though DeHaat did not respond to Inc42’s queries on the challenges, the startup’s journey mirrors the hurdles of operating in one of the most fragmented and policy-dependent sectors. The Patna-based startup is clearly finding it tricky to balance the top and the bottom line growth.

Low farmer margins, unpredictable yields, diversity, and volatile commodity prices make scaling agritech startups a high cash-burn exercise.

DeHaat does have scale on its side. Does that really give it an edge over the competitors who are also similarly struggling to reach profits?

Decoding DeHaat’s Business

Having raised more than $247 Mn and with seven acquisitions in six years, DeHaat is the poster child of the agritech ecosystem in India. It claims to be working with over 13 Mn farmers and 18,000 rural entrepreneurs across 11 Indian states.

Founded by Abhishek Dokania, Adarsh Srivastava, Amrendra Singh, Shashank Kumar and Shyam Sundar........

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