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Essmart

Enabling rural shops to grow their business through sustainable livelihood solutions

Photo of Prashanth Venkataramana

Prashanth Venkataramana

Cofounder & CEO at Essmart

More about Prashanth »
Employees 21–50
Headquarters Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
Essmart distributes life-improving products to build a network of rural retailers selling socially impactful agriculture, clean tech, and energy efficiency products.

15M small retailers—88% of India’s $950B in retail spending—are not digitized or equipped to sell durable agricultural products due to constraints in working capital, space, customer service, and product maintenance. Essmart de-risks these high-value products for shop owners to act as agents of change in their communities—and as active selling points of innovative, impactful products.

Essmart has over 5,000 active shops on its platform and is well poised for growth with a revamped, scalable model. The company generated $2M of revenue in 2022 and is on pace to generate $3.5M in 2023.

Notable Achievements

  • Winner of the Sankalp Global Awards in 2022.
  • Winner of the FM Kirby Prize in 2023.

Currently Operating in One Region

Press Mentions

March 12, 2024

Prashanth Venkatramana | The Subjective Space

Read on The Subjective Space »

August 21, 2023

Insaan invests in Indian rural distributor Essmart

Read on ImpactAlpha »

February 25, 2023

2022-2023 F.M. Kirby Impact Prize Winner: Essmart

Read on Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) | Duke University, Fuqua School of Business »

December 7, 2022

This E-com platform gives agri-tech in India the boost it needs

Read on Sify »

September 20, 2022

Getting innovative products to rural communities

Read on MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology »

April 11, 2014

Social enterprise takes smart products to rural poor

Read on Reuters »

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