May 12, 2022

photo credit: Sencrop

By Lynda Kiernan-Stone, Global AgInvesting Media

Since its founding in 2016, Sencrop has had an overarching mission – to make precision farming accessible to all. To advance this mission, Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP) has led an $18 million Series B for the startup.

Also participating in the round were EIT Food (supported by the EU), Stellar Impact (managed by Telos Impact), IRD Management, and existing investors BPIfrance, Demeter IM, and NCI Waterstart. 

Sencrop provides farmers with a crop-oriented vision of weather conditions, disease and pest risks, and irrigation needs to empower their ability to make more informed decisions and reduce their risk profile with a positive environmental footprint.

Sencrop’s sensors and platform enable 20,000 farmers to have access to real-time and predictive data pertaining to their fields vis-a-vis micro-climatic information, water stress details, plant growth stages, disease and pest status, and more.

Using these thousands of data points, farmers can optimize their use of inputs, identify weather and water stress, determine pest and disease risk for their crops – including frost danger and susceptibility to mildew – in order to take the appropriate countermeasures. 

Over the course of six years, Sencrop has grown to be Europe’s leader in field-connected solutions for all types of crops with a headquarters in France, offices in the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, and Italy, and operations in more than 20 countries.

“From the first time we met Martin and Michael, the company’s co-founders, we realized that this leading European company, with its next-generation micro-climate technology, has the ability to revolutionize the farmer’s world,” said Erel Margalit, founder and executive chairman, JVP and Margalit Startup City. “Using AI smart solutions, like a personal “waze” for the farmer’s weather conditions, the farmer can maximize his crop quality in a very short time.”

“Our investment in Sencrop is part of our wider vision to invest in companies that provide ground-breaking solutions to the world’s most critical challenges,” Margalit continued. “We are happy to join forces with Sencrop and support the team to bring its ground-breaking micro-climate technology to North America and the rest of the world markets.”

Taking a collaborative and open approach, Sencrop also ensures that farmers can connect through networks to share gathered information from their land to help each other find solutions to challenges. 

“The reasons for this strong adoption lie in the simple, collaborative and impactful nature of our solution,” said Michael Bruniaux, co-founder and CEO, Sencrop. “As agricultural input prices are rising and weather is becoming even more unstable and critical, Sencrop enables farmers to make the best decisions every day to reduce crop risks and limit environmental impact, while increasing their profitability.”

In 2019 the startup closed on a $10 million Series A. That same year it opened its first offices abroad, in the East Anglia region of the UK, quickly building up momentum to have more than 1,000 monthly users on its app to-date. Now, with a strong presence in the arable sector, the company works with some of the biggest names in the agriculture and food industries, including British Sugar, Birdseye, Syngenta, Affinity Water, and Fram Farmers. 

Sencrop stated that the capital from this round will be used to strengthening its leadership in these core markets, to accelerate its international expansion toward North America, and to focus its trajectory toward becoming the world’s leader in the agtech space. 

“We have developed a unique microclimate technology which today allows more than 20,000 professionals – farmers, winegrowers, fruit growers, etc. to access ultra-precise and ultra-local information for better daily monitoring of their crops and the risks on their plots,” said Martin Ducroquet, co-founder and general manager, Sencrop. “The fundraising, led by JVP, a global reference player in ag-tech, opens up new prospects for international acceleration that will be supported by new impact investors, specializing in climate-tech.”

“Sencrop is the only company that has the largest connected community of farmers in Europe, based on 20,000 customers that receive online data to help them achieve better results and maximize their yields,” added Gadi Porat, general manager, JVP. “This new funding will enable Sencrop to expand this community globally, utilizing more data to help more famers.”

~ Lynda Kiernan-Stone is editor with GAI Media, and is managing editor and daily contributor for Global AgInvesting’s AgInvesting Weekly News and  Agtech Intel News, as well as HighQuest Group’s Unconventional Ag. She can be reached at lkiernan-stone@globalaginvesting.com.

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