By Lynda Kiernan
Tel Aviv-based agtech startup Agritask has raised $8.5 million in Series A capital from the InsuResiliance Investment Fund, an investment vehicle established for the German government by KfW Development Bank and managed by Swiss impact investment manager BlueOrchard Finance. Barn Investimentos, a Brazilian early-stage venture capital investor, also participated in the round.
Founded in 2010, AgriTask has taken a “One Platform, One Database” approach to develop an agronomic management platform that can integrate with more than 40 hardware and software systems, including those by John Deere, IBM, and SAP.
Because of its unique system configuration, the AgriTask platform easily adapts to each client’s specific work methods eliminating any lengthy training, and therefore reducing time and cost of adoption at scale. Serving some of the largest names in agriculture, including General Mills, Suzano, and Born Jesus, AgriTask’s system offers the ability to upgrade agronomic visibility and real-time decision making which helps with risk management.
Active in 20 countries, and covering more than 50 crop types, AgriTask’s platform offers a holistic solution that can aid in decision making for the entire agricultural process, from soil fertility management, growth monitoring, and harvesting logistics, resulting in higher yields and lower costs.
“We knew from day one that we need to build an extremely flexible platform that will be able to adjust itself to the clients – and not the other way around. AgriTask values and embraces the extensive knowledge of its clients – and integrates their wisdom into the platform,” said Israel Fraier, founder, AgriTask. “As a side effect, we are also creating the largest library of best practices inside our system.”
The proceeds from this round will be used by the company to expand its farmer client base across the Americas, and to increase its penetration into regional projects, where AgriTask’s platform can provide agronomic services and risk management, and the global insurance sector, where it can enable unprecedented risk analysis. This in turn helps them develop and manage more advanced insurance offerings, achieve deeper insurance penetration to new and underserved markets, and lower operation costs.
“The data-driven insights generated by our system create an opportunity to build a new generation of precision agronomy tools that we’re only beginning to understand,” said Ofir Ardon, CEO, AgriTask.
The company states that the huge volume of agronomic data compiled in AgriTask’s platform will lead to the development of new techniques that can optimize crop growth and agro-economic decisions, which will be to the benefit of the world’s smallholders and large-scale producers.
“Our developments include cutting-edge tools in the field of smallholder projects and agricultural insurance. We intend to invest more resources in scientifically leveraging the huge amount of data in our system and given our unique geographic and sector-wide spread – we intend to push the boundaries of data analytics in agriculture.”
– Lynda Kiernan is Editor with GAI Media and daily contributor to the GAI News and Agtech Intel platforms. If you would like to submit a contribution for consideration, please contact Ms. Kiernan at lkiernan@globalaginvesting.