Dairy is India’s single largest agricultural commodity, contributing 5% to the national economy and directly employing more than 8 crore farmers. Yet for decades, buying and selling cattle — the very foundation of that ecosystem — remained stubbornly offline, chaotic, and riddled with middlemen. Two civil engineering graduates from IIT Delhi decided to fix that. The IIT Delhi Animall startup they built out of a single rented room is today a digital marketplace valued at approximately Rs 565 crore, quietly rewriting the rules of rural commerce in India.

The IIT Delhi Duo Behind the IIT Delhi Animall Startup

After graduating from IIT Delhi in 2016, both founders initially pursued corporate careers. Neetu Yadav worked as a technology analyst at Citi before transitioning into product management, while Kirti Jangra also had a corporate sector background. Neither had roots in agriculture. Neetu grew up in a dairy farming family in Nawalpura, Rajasthan. The thought of breaking news to her father, a dairy farmer, was always at the back of her mind. Kirti, a small-town girl from Haryana, had actually been accepted for an MBA program in the United States before she walked away from it entirely.

Neetu met Kirti on the very first day at IIT Delhi, and a few hours later they discovered they were going to be roommates — the start of an enduring friendship. They even ran a prototype venture together in college: a cooler company they jokingly named “Kirti-Neetu Cooler Company,” born because old electrical systems at IIT Delhi meant a regular cooler could blow the fuse for the entire campus, so they used oil containers from hostel kitchens to build a low-cost, low-voltage alternative. The product flopped. The partnership didn’t.

From a Weekend Hackathon to a Rs 565 Crore Agritech Startup

Animall first took shape in August 2019 in Bengaluru, where Neetu and Kirti were participating in a weekend hackathon. Their five-member team went on to win both the jury and audience awards — and they used the Rs 2 lakh prize money to fund their early operations.

The timing was deliberate. In 2019, Team Animall conducted extensive research across the country, interviewing thousands of farmers, and realised that the sector was largely untouched by technology — even as the gross value added from livestock within the agricultural industry exceeded seven trillion rupees, the trade of cattle continued to operate in a highly informal, fragmented, and disorganised ecosystem.

Over 300 million cattle in India are distributed among 75 million dairy farmers — contrast that with Brazil, which has 230 million cattle among just 2 million farmers. “Imagine the fragmentation in India,” Neetu Yadav has said. That fragmentation was the opportunity. People were using the internet in rural India for entertainment — YouTube, Facebook, WhatsApp — but there was no utility-driven app to solve the real livelihood problems of farmers.

In November 2019, Yadav recruited Jangra to launch Animall, an online cattle market, together with two Pratilipi co-workers. The group began operating out of a small rented room in Bangalore.

How the Cattle Trading App India Needed Actually Works

Animall operates as an online peer-to-peer livestock listing and trading platform intended to empower millions of dairy farmers, offering a marketplace to sell and buy cattle while building efficiencies in the dairy ecosystem using technology, data science, and design — enabling dairy farmers to trade online from anywhere while saving time, money, and effort.

The app is built for Bharat, not just India. The UI/UX is in Hindi and regional languages, showing listings of cattle for sale based on the user’s location with details such as age, litres of milk per day, breed, and asking price. The app carries 4.6 stars on the Play Store, and after clicking on a cow’s profile, it can direct the buyer to a WhatsApp chat with the seller.

But this cattle trading app India knows goes well beyond buying and selling. The platform has expanded into services such as animal healthcare, artificial insemination, and other dairy-related offerings, helping farmers improve productivity and access better prices. Animall also offers internet-based e-veterinary services for registered users, where farmers can book a call appointment with a certified veterinarian and obtain information regarding animal behaviour, diseases, and symptoms. The platform has also built tools for price estimation, animal feed guidance, loan information, and insurance access — making it, as its own mission states, a one-stop shop for everything cattle.

IIT Delhi Dairy Farmer Startup: The Scale of Impact

The numbers behind the Neetu Yadav Kirti Jangra Animall story are staggering. Since its inception in 2019, Animall has rapidly grown, reaching over 8 million dairy farmers and facilitating the sale of more than 850,000 cattle, amounting to a gross transaction value of Rs 4,000 crore.

Around 80 lakh farmers are now associated with Animall, and on average, a business of Rs 350 crore is done through the platform per month. That trajectory — from a weekend hackathon project to monthly transactions running into hundreds of crores — is what makes this IIT Delhi dairy farmer startup so remarkable. According to Jangra, Animall’s biggest achievement is making online cattle trading, which was earlier taken as a joke, a mundane, everyday phenomenon for dairy farmers.

One farmer’s testimonial, recalled by Yadav herself, captures it best: “After struggling for over a month, a farmer was able to sell three of his cows through Animall within 24 hours. He later said, ‘Yeh app nahin aandolan hai’ — it’s not an app, it’s a revolution.”

Agritech Startup Animall News: Who Bet on Them?

The agritech startup Animall news cycle lit up early when marquee names started backing the duo. Animall started with a pre-seed funding of ₹50 lakh in January 2020 and, since then, Yadav and Jangra have raised ₹167.3 crore from investors including Beenext, WEH, Sequoia, Omnivore, Rocketship Nexus, and SIG.

Animall has raised a total funding of $24.7 million over 5 rounds from 38 investors, including Peak XV Partners and Nexus Venture Partners, with the latest funding round of $13.8 million closing in July 2021.

Shaadi.com founder Anupam Mittal was an early backer in the seed round with an investment of Rs 75 lakh. What convinced Mittal to take the bet was not just the business model — it was the founders’ background. Wherever founders relate to a problem at a very deep level, he noted, they tend to solve it with more passion and play the game for the long term.

Rajan Anandan, managing director at Sequoia Capital India, put it plainly: “Neetu and Kirti are deeply insightful about the problem they are solving and we believe that Animall will change the face of this $250+ billion cattle and dairy market, which has historically been largely unorganised and unregulated.”

India Cattle Market Digital: Why the Opportunity Is Enormous

The India cattle market digital transformation that Animall is spearheading is not a niche play. India ranks first in milk production, contributing 24.76% of global milk production. The livestock sector grew at a CAGR of 12.99% from 2014-15 to 2022-23, with the contribution of livestock to total agricultural GVA climbing from 24.38% to 30.23% over the same period.

The India dairy market is projected to grow from $146.80 billion in 2025 to $274.09 billion by 2032, at a CAGR of 9.33%. Yet for all its scale, the cattle trading layer of this market had no credible digital infrastructure before platforms like Animall arrived. The startup’s journey highlights how technology can address long-standing challenges in India’s rural economy — rather than building products for urban consumers, the founders chose to digitise one of the country’s oldest and most fragmented markets, creating a platform that connects buyers and sellers while improving transparency in cattle trading.

What Animall Startup Valuation 2026 Signals for Agritech

The Animall startup valuation 2026 conversation is about more than one company. In India, the Livestock Tech sector has seen $18.5 million in funding in 2026 to date, and Animall ranks first amongst 19 active competitors, standing first in total funding among its peers.

The platform has also sparked a broader rethink about what “rural tech” means. Animall’s stated ambition is to be the operating system of the $250 billion dairy farming industry by building a one-stop shop for anything and everything cattle. That ambition is well on track given Animall startup valuation 2026 discourse — from Rs 175 crore post-money valuation in early funding rounds to the Rs 565 crore figure circulating today, the growth curve has been steep and consistent.

Critically, Animall’s success is already opening doors for the next wave. Future fundraising opportunities look promising given the rapid increase in Animall’s valuation and strong investor interest, with this financial backing enabling the company to expand its reach and enhance service offerings, including veterinary consultations and dairy farming advice.

The Takeaway: Engineering Empathy, Not Just Startups

There’s a line that Neetu Yadav keeps returning to. “Our dream is to improve the lives of farmers by making dairy farming significantly more productive and profitable.” It’s not corporate boilerplate — both founders grew up in households where cattle weren’t inventory, they were livelihood.

That personal skin in the game is precisely what separates the IIT Delhi Animall startup from tech ventures that chase rural markets for their valuation upside. With an easy-to-use mobile application, Animall has empowered dairy farmers to start their own farms by gaining access to quality cattle efficiently and quickly. Every feature, every design call is rooted in what a farmer in Rajasthan or Haryana actually needs — not what looks good in a pitch deck.

India’s cattle market has waited long enough for its digital moment. Thanks to Neetu Yadav and Kirti Jangra, that moment is here.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Who are the founders of Animall?

Animall was co-founded by Neetu Yadav and Kirti Jangra, former roommates at IIT Delhi who studied Civil Engineering. They launched the company in November 2019 along with co-founders Anurag Bisoi and Libin V Babu.

What is Animall’s current valuation?

Animall Technologies is valued at approximately Rs 565 crore. The company has raised a total of $24.7 million over five funding rounds from 38 investors, including Sequoia Capital India, Nexus Venture Partners, Beenext, Omnivore, and Rocketship.

What does the Animall app actually do?

Animall is an online peer-to-peer platform for buying and selling dairy cattle such as cows and buffaloes. Beyond livestock trading, it also provides e-veterinary consultations, animal healthcare information, artificial insemination guidance, price estimation tools, animal feed information, loan access, and insurance options — all in Hindi and regional Indian languages.

How big is Animall’s user base and transaction volume?

As of the latest available data, Animall has over 80 lakh (8 million) farmers associated with the platform. The app has facilitated the sale of over 8.5 lakh animals worth Rs 4,000 crore in gross transaction value, and generates approximately Rs 350 crore in monthly business volume.

How did the idea for Animall start?

The idea originated at a weekend hackathon organised by storytelling platform Pratilipi in August 2019, where Neetu and Kirti’s team won both the jury and audience awards. They used the Rs 2 lakh prize money to fund early operations, and officially launched Animall at scale in November 2019 after conducting extensive field research with thousands of dairy farmers across India.

What was the career background of the Animall founders before launching the startup?

Both founders initially pursued corporate careers after graduating from IIT Delhi in 2016. Neetu Yadav worked as a technology analyst at Citi before moving into product management. Kirti Jangra had also been accepted into a US MBA program, which she declined in order to co-found Animall.

Who are Animall’s key investors?

Animall’s investor base includes Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia Capital India), Nexus Venture Partners, Beenext, WEH Ventures, Omnivore, Rocketship VC, SIG, and angel investors such as Anupam Mittal (founder of Shaadi.com). The company has received funding across five rounds totalling $24.7 million.