Cambridge-based agricultural technology firm KisanHub has raised £1.75m in pre-Series A funding.
The crop intelligence platform’s round was led by Notion Capital and IQ Capital.
Callibrate Management and other undisclosed angel investors also participated.
KisanHub will use the cash to continue developing its proprietary technology, which leverages big data and machine learning to help producers and suppliers within the agricultural industry make decisions.
The money will also be used to hire across sales and customer success roles.
KisanHub’s CEO Dr Sachin Shende spoke about the news: “KisanHub is on an ambitious mission to create a field level data infrastructure of the future and integrate that data with our Crop Intelligence Platform to deliver actionable insights to enterprises and their growers. With the new investment, we will kick start the hardware deployment in the UK, attract new talent into sales and customer success functions and expand our engineering capabilities to deliver end-to-end supply chain solutions.”
The startup has operations in Pune (India) and was founded by Dr Shende and Giles Barker (COO) having been accelerated out of the Cambridge University Judge Business School’s Accelerate Program in 2013.
Patrick Norris, from Notion Capital, explained why he decided to back the team: “The global agriculture industry was slower to see digital progress than many other sectors, however, recent years have brought significant technological innovation and vastly improved access to data.
“It is immensely exciting to see KisanHub sit at the heart of this ongoing shift, as a data intelligence platform that benefits all those that participate in food production and distribution, including growers, producer groups, machinery manufacturers and agronomists amongst others.
“The KisanHub team brings a unique mix of expertise and skills spanning agriculture, data and machine learning and we’re delighted to be backing them through this next phase of global growth.”
IQ Capital, based in Cambridge and London, backs early stage ‘deep tech’ B2B companies from the UK.
The firm is particularly focused on disruptive algorithms in machine learning, FinTech, data science, IoT as well as embedded systems including research machines and robotics.
Kerry Baldwin, from IQ Capital, commented: “KisanHub is leading the emerging field of Agri-tech data capture and crop forecasting and prediction through their Crop Intelligence Platform which is already being used by the largest Trials and Producer Group companies.
“The combination of having created the most advanced algorithms dedicated to this field, together with a strong focus on ease of installation and usability, creates a compelling ROI and will drive adoption of this technology throughout the AgriTech sector.”
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