“Covid has brought home for countries the risks of disrupted food supply chains, food safety and food security,” Kumar, also the startup’s chief executive officer, said in a phone interview. “Every country and every agri-business wants to remotely monitor and safeguard the supply chain.”
CropIn, an artificial intelligence and data-based agritech startup, has raised US$20 million ($26.4 million) in a funding round led by Temasek Holdings Pte-backed ABC World Asia, as the coronavirus pandemic accelerates the adoption of digital technologies in farming.
The Bangalore-headquartered agricultural AI startup provides software-as-a-service, or SAAS, products to farms and development organizations globally to improve predictability, efficiency and sustainability of crops. Additional new investors in the Series C funding include Infosys Ltd. billionaire co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan’s family office and a fund of the UK government, CDC Group. CropIn has raised US$33.1 million so far.
The company was set up in 2010 by Krishna Kumar, who hails from a family of farmers in central India and quit a career at General Electric Co. to found the startup after being deeply affected by widespread rural suicides in his country. It analyzes data such as aerial imagery, ground scouting, hyper-local weather and market price fluctuations from 13 million acres across 4 million farms worldwide to predict productivity and monitor risks for thousands of variants of crops. That allows the company to provide warnings to small farms on what disease will hit a particular crop or when to expect an adverse climate event such as morning frost.
