January 12, 2021

By Lynda Kiernan, Global AgInvesting Media

ABC World Asia, a private equity fund with a dedicated focus on evidence-based impact investing in Asia launched by Temasek in May 2019, has led a $20 million Series C for global AI and data-driven agtech company CropIn. 

The round, which brings total funding for the company to-date to $33.1 million, included existing investors Chiratae Ventures, Invested Development, and Ankur Capital, and brought on new investors CDC Group and Pratithi Investment Trust, the family office of Kris Gopalakrishnan.

Other existing CropIn investors include BeeNext and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Strategic Investment Fund.

Founded in Bangalore in 2010 by Krishna Kumar, CropIn is the developer of  ground-to-cloud platforms that enable those in the agricultural ecosystem to adopt a data-driven approach to production, risk assessment, and to “maximize per-acre value”.

CropIn does this through two platforms:

SmartFarm – CropIn’s farm data and agronomy management platform, SmartFarm, enables growers to improve the efficiency, productivity, predictability, and sustainability of value chains, and to enable agribusinesses to meet food safety standards and to offer farm-to-fork traceability.

By helping farmers adopt sustainable farming practices, SmartFarm is pivotal to building long-term resilience and viability for farming communities. Toward this end, Cropin has partnered with agricultural players and development finance institutions and government entities in 52 countries to drive these goals. 

SmartRisk – CropIn’s risk assessment platform SmartRisk combines computer vision with deep-learning algorithms on multispectral imagery generated from satellites and drones, field scouting data, and hyperlocal weather data to achieve high prediction accuracy at the plot level. This ability, achieved by analyzing and interpreting farm data from more than 388 crops with nearly 9,500 variants across trillions of data points that grow by the day, improves underwriting and risk assessment, enabling banks, insurance providers, and other financial institutions to make more informed decisions, identify new markets, and expand product portfolios for high-volume, low-ticket opportunities.

“The robust, predictive power of digitalization offers tremendous potential for the agriculture industry to leapfrog its many challenges in the coming years,” said Krishna Kumar, founder and CEO, CropIn. “The industry is capturing more data than ever, on everything from agronomy, weather and logistics to market price volatility, which has helped reduce acute data gaps throughout the value chain.”

Kumar continued, “In order to improve yields, optimize production and improve resilience and sustainability, agri-businesses are increasingly relying on innovative agri-tech solutions like artificial intelligence, data analytics, and the internet of things. We, at CropIn, are excited to advance the ‘AI-Culture’ for Agriculture.”

To-date, CropIn has positively impacted 13 million acres and 4 million farmers through both of these platforms. In the first year of engagement smallholder farmers associated with CropIn’s clientele observed yield increases of nearly 25 percent, and continued to experience yield improvements over the following years.

The company’s SmartRisk AI has processed more than 160 million hectares of land area (395 million acres), and has the potential over the coming three-to-five years to impact 70 million of the world’s farmers.

With the capital secured through this Series C, CropIn plans to continue to innovate SmartRisk, and further strengthen its AI capabilities, to meet this potential.

This model aligns with Temasek’s ABC framework, and the ABC World Asia Fund’s mandate: A – an active economy; B – a beautiful society; and, C – a clean Earth, which has its foundation in the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

Companies within the ABC World Asia portfolio need to demonstrate commitment to positive, measurable social or environmental impact in the fields of sustainable food and agriculture, climate and water solutions, health and education, smart and livable cities, or financial and digital inclusion, while also generating risk-adjusted returns.

“Sustainable food and agriculture is a core investment theme for ABC World Asia. The agriculture industry is an important pillar of the global economy, in particular driving Asia’s growth and feeding the region’s rapidly increasing population,” said David Heng, founder and CEO, ABC World Asia.

“The industry now faces challenges more pronounced than before, with the COVID-19 global pandemic highlighting the vulnerability of global food supplies and impacting the livelihoods of many smallholder farmers,” continued Heng. “CropIn’s digital solutions will enable farmers to utilize real-time data for better decision-making and improved farm productivity. This investment underscores our support of such smart and sustainable agri-tech solutions that can build resilience in agriculture.”

CropIn also states that it will focus on its global expansion, already begun with a newly established office in Amsterdam where it will be hiring local expertise to drive growth in the European market, while it also will invest to penetrate deeper into its targeted global markets. 

Lynda Kiernan is editor with GAI Media, and is managing editor and daily contributor for Global AgInvesting’s AgInvesting Weekly News and  Agtech Intel News, and HighQuest Group’s Oilseed & Grain News. She is also a contributor to the GAI Gazette. She can be reached at lkiernan@globalaginvesting.com.