By Lynda Kiernan
Italian agtech startup and app developer xFarm has closed on a €3 million (US$3.3 million) Series A led by United Ventures SGR SpA, and including TiVenture.
“TiVenture is proud to participate in the investment in xFarm, an opportunity that presents all the prerequisites for creating a successful digital company: a market with enormous potential for development, a team of young entrepreneurs focused on achieving corporate goals and a financial partner of the caliber of United Ventures, able to follow the company in all its growth phases,” noted Paolo Orsatti, managing partner, TiVenture.
Founded in Manno in 2018, xFarm has created a farm management app that the company states was “born of farmers for farmers”. The company’s modular, open SaaS platform was launched as a simple means to digitize farming operations through data collection and analysis to raise efficiency sustainability, and traceability, while easing the burdens associated with red tape.
“xFarm’s founder, Matteo Vanotti, came to us with this vision: to create an application that can help and simplify the work of farmers,” said Massimiliano Magrini, co-founder and managing partner, United Ventures.
“A world he knows well, because before being an engineer and an entrepreneur he is a farmer himself, as he has always been involved in the family farm. We believe that Matteo and his team are real game changers, and that they have the right skills and ambition to scale the business internationally and become the reference platform for farmers who want to manage their companies digitally.”
Using a “freemium” model, xFarm offers 13 free functions, or allows users to upgrade to a premium service of 18 modules, that integrates with on-farm IoT sensors, cloud-based management software, and a marketplace offering precision farming services, weather and disease alerts, or irrigation optimization solutions.
Despite there being a pressing need for global agricultural systems to rapidly ramp up output in order to meet the demands of a worldwide population on pace to reach 9.7 billion by 2050, agriculture is the least digitized of all major industries, according to the McKinsey Global Institute’s Digitization Index.
This has made agriculture a sector ideally placed to experience a rapid and widespread technological evolution, and startups like xFarm on the front line of this coming wave.
“The decision to invest in xFarm is in line with our strategy of investing in the digital transformation of traditionally analogue sectors and, according to the McKinsey Global Institute’s Industry Digitization Index, agriculture remains the least digitized of all major industrial sectors to date, noted Magrini.
With the capital from this round, xFarm intends to consolidate its presence in the Italian market, and to then expand its reach across Europe, and into South America, and Africa. It also will strengthen its platform by applying AI to its data and forecasting models, and through leveraging blockchain technology, and to release new modules to its customer base.
“We believe that Matteo and his team are real game-changers and that they have the right skills and ambition to scale the business internationally and become the reference platform for farmers who want to manage their companies digitally,” said Magrini.
– 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.