The Venture Codex

Participated · Equity · Mar 2022

SupPlant offers a hardware‑and‑software irrigation system plus a sensor‑less API that use plant, soil and weather data to deliver precise 10–14 day watering recommendations. The hardware package uses five sensors (deep soil, shallow soil, trunk, leaf and fruit) and typically measures one plant per ~25 acres to extrapolate field needs. Its algorithm combines sensor inputs, forecasts and proprietary data and has been trained on millions of irrigation events from tens of thousands of sensors covering 33 crops and over 200 varieties. The sensor‑less API served 500,000 maize farmers in Kenya last season and the company aims to reach more than one million smallholders in Africa and India. SupPlant reports roughly 70 employees and plans to grow to over 100 this year. Commercial markets called out include Australia, Mexico, South Africa and Argentina, and the company is near signing irrigation for 2.1 million date trees in the UAE.

Participated · Series B · Feb 2022

Agritask is an open SaaS Agronomic Intelligence (AgI) platform that delivers actionable agronomic intelligence to the Food & Beverage industry and the wider agri-food ecosystem. Its platform monitors more than 50 crop types across over 2 million hectares in 35+ countries and is used in more than 30 countries. Customers include large-scale growers, multi-farm corporations, private equity, ag-buyers, food conglomerates, ag-financing and insurance companies, as well as governments and NGOs. Agritask is headquartered in Tel Aviv, employs 70 people worldwide and has offices in Brazil and Bulgaria. In February 2022 the company raised $26.0M in a Series B to accelerate product development, scale global sales and marketing, and attract and onboard key international talent. Agritask offers an agronomic management software platform that supports real-time decision-making across the full agricultural production process, from soil fertility management and growth monitoring to harvest logistics. The platform integrates with more than 40 hardware and software data sources, including John Deere, Airbus, IBM and SAP. It is active in 20 countries and covers over 50 crop types, and is used by farmers as well as food and beverage companies, agricultural insurers, input providers, and governments or developmental organizations. Customers include General Mills, Suzano and Bom Jesus. The company intends to use newly raised funds to enhance its data analytics features and to expand its customer reach, including projects serving smallholder farmers and the agricultural insurance sector. Founded in 2010 and led by CEO Ofir Ardon, Agritask targets scaled, data-driven farm management across multiple stakeholder groups.

Participated · Series A · Jun 2021

Arugga builds autonomous robots that monitor individual plants in indoor settings and perform non-contact pollination using cameras, AI flower detection and an air-nozzle ‘buzz’ pulse. The robots run on a pipe-rail cart and can operate under artificial lighting and extreme temperatures. The company offers its technology on a leasing model, charging growers a monthly fee per hectare plus tech support. Pilot trials in Israel, Australia and the US have shown yields 1%–5% higher than bee-based pollination and up to 15% higher than manual pollination. Arugga has a distribution agreement with investor Biobest to serve the US and Canada and is developing a second “beyond pollination” module. The startup plans additional trials in North America and will use its recent funding to hire R&D, marketing and customer-support staff.