Meet an Unreasonable Venture

Essmart

Enabling rural shops to grow their business through sustainable livelihood solutions

Prashanth Venkataramana

Cofounder & CEO at Essmart

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essmart-global.com

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.

Education, Energy & Environment, and Health

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

Prashanth Venkataramana is a social entrepreneur and CEO & Co-founder of Essmart.

Read on The Subjective Space »

August 21, 2023

Insaan invests in Indian rural distributor Essmart

Livelihood essentials like farming supplies and solar-powered lights are expensive and hard to secure in rural India. Essmart handles ordering and logistics for hundreds of affordable livelihood...

Read on ImpactAlpha »

February 25, 2023

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

We are thrilled to announce Essmart as the recipient of the 2022-23 F.M. Kirby Prize for Scaling Social Impact! Essmart is a for-profit social enterprise in India, on a mission to grow rural...

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

With a looming food crisis powered by conflict, climate change, possibility of global recession, growing food needs to be made easier.

Read on Sify »

September 20, 2022

Getting innovative products to rural communities

MIT spinout Essmart has partnered with local retailers in rural India to create a supply chain that helps innovative products reach consumers in low-resource settings.

Read on MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology »

April 11, 2014

Social enterprise takes smart products to rural poor

A start-up Indian social enterprise has come up with an innovative solution to one of the country's biggest development challenges - helping the rural poor easily access basics such as clean...

Read on Reuters »