Collective Spark is a venture capital fund focusing on early-stage technology ventures. They aims to back and elevate highly driven hustlers and hackers who want to build scalable, disruptive businesses. They consider ourselves partners for the long term, and define Collective Spark as an Operational VC where ventures get access to top specialized talent and hands-on shared resources in distinct areas critical to their success.

Collective Spark

Wamda Capital is the MENA region's leading venture capital firm investing in exceptional entrepreneurs building the region's most promising high growth technology businesses. We invest both at the growth and seed stages with the aim of taking portfolio companies through successive rounds of financing through to exit.

Wamda Capital

Quona Capital is a venture capital firm that invests in innovative financial technology companies in emerging markets. The firm was formed with a simple idea: that technology has the power to radically improve the quality, access, and affordability of financial services for underserved consumers and businesses in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. We invest in disruptive innovations to create a more financially inclusive world. In short, we fuel global fintech.

Quona Capital

Syngenta Ventures is the corporate venture capital (VC) team of Syngenta, a leading agriculture company helping to improve global food security by enabling farmers to make better use of available resources. Created in 2009, Syngenta Ventures was one of the first venture capital teams dedicated to agriculture. With an experienced team of investment professionals possessing more than 45 collective years of VC experience, Syngenta Ventures has established itself as one of the most active and knowledgeable agricultural investors. Syngenta Ventures is stage agnostic, from investing in seed rounds to larger growth equity rounds. They typically invest alongside other financial and corporate VC investors, and they avoid asking for any rights or options for Syngenta as they recognize the importance of having the interests of all shareholders aligned. They use their deep experience as investors and running commercial Ag businesses to work with their portfolio companies to help them maximize their potential value. They often take board or board observer roles, spending the time needed with the company and management to help them achieve their goals. Finally, they are connected into Syngenta, ranging from R&D to commercial teams, around the world. They can help their portfolio companies validate new products in field trials, increase market visibility, and share industry knowledge and contacts. While they encourage technical and/or commercial collaboration with Syngenta, these are negotiated by Syngenta and not connected to their investment. Linked to this, they maintain a strict firewall with Syngenta to protect any confidential information from being shared. They take this responsibility seriously and can provide references from their portfolio companies to demonstrate this.

Syngenta Ventures

Elevator Ventures is the Corporate Venture Capital entity of Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) headquartered in Vienna. Its primary focus is on early stage and growth investments in Fintech and related enabling technologies in Central and Eastern Europe. In the role of a leading growth partner for Fintechs in CEE, Elevator Ventures leverages RBI Group`s expertise, network and corporate strength in order to help promising scaleups expand across this dynamic region and beyond.

Elevator Ventures

Syngenta Group is an agriculture innovation companies, with roots going back more than 250 years. Its 48,000 people across more than 100 countries strive to transform agriculture through breakthrough products and technologies that play a vital role in enabling the food chain to feed the world safely, sustainably and with respect for our planet. Swiss headquartered and Chinese-owned, the Group draws strength from its four business units – Syngenta Crop Protection headquartered in Switzerland, Syngenta Seeds headquartered in the United States, ADAMA headquartered in Israel, and Syngenta Group China – that provide industry-leading ways to serve customers everywhere.

Syngenta Group

Yara Growth Ventures is the venture investment team within Yara International ASA. The Yara Growth Ventures team invests in disruptive startups in the agri-food industry globally in order to advance the mission of responsibly feeding the world and protecting the planet. Learn more at www.yaragrowthventures.com

Yara Growth Ventures

Tarfin

By leveraging the power of technology and data science, Tarfin is creating Europe’s first and most advanced fintech lending solution for farmers and retailers.

Based in Turkey, Tarfin is an online marketplace operator, allowing farmers to buy agricultural inputs at competitive prices using its Tarfin Mobile app. Via the app, farmers can buy inputs such as feed, fertilizers, pesticides, and equipment at competitive prices by comparing input prices across retailers. Farmers are also offered credit payment facilities, having the option of buying inputs before the harvest season on credit and paying at harvest.&nbsp;

Sustainably solving the food shortages of the future

Smart Farming

Agri-fintech Tarfin eyes further growth in Romania after strong 2023

Based in Turkey, Tarfin is an online marketplace operator, allowing farmers to buy agricultural inputs at competitive prices using its Tarfin Mobile app. Via the app, farmers can buy inputs such as feed, fertilizers, pesticides, and equipment at competitive prices by comparing input prices across retailers. Farmers are also offered credit payment facilities, having the option of buying inputs before the harvest season on credit and paying at harvest.&nbsp;Farmers choosing credit plans will be screened using Tarfin’s proprietary risk-scoring models that evaluates creditworthiness of farmers based on credit history and farm-related data such as farm size, crop type, and yield. The evaluation process is automated, and farmers will be provided a credit score on the spot. Tarfin facilitates this credit at an average interest rate of 29% compared to 45% to that of direct lending from input retailers and other informal credit sources, and receives a percentage of that interest as revenue. Tarfin does not charge added fees on top of prices for the inputs.&nbsp;&nbsp;The company aims to reduce farmers’ production costs using its solution and claims that on average farmers gain an 8% price advantage for every purchase made using Tarfin’s platform. As of April 2022, Tarfin Mobil had facilitated over USD 110 million in transactions for agricultural inputs for over 40,000 Turkish farmers and had partnered with over 1,000 distributors across 80 cities in the country. Tarfin expanded its operations to Romania in <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/9696">April 2022,</a> offering farmers access to agricultural inputs and credit facilities through Tarfin Mobil.Key customers and partnershipsIn <a href="https://business-review.eu/business/agriculture/tarfin-and-symbiotics-investments-announce-the-strategic-partnership-to-finance-small-and-medium-sized-farmers-254876">December 2023</a>, Terfin partnered with Symbiotic Investments to support over 200 farmers, providing the necessities to scale up their businesses.Funding and financialsIn December 2021, Tarfin raised USD 8 million in a pre-Series B bridge funding round with participation from new investor Yara Growth Ventures and existing investors including Syngenta Ventures, Quona Capital, Elevator Ventures, and Collective Spark Fund. The funds were to be used for the expansion of the company’s software development and data science teams, the launch of operations in Romania, and development of new products and services for its platform.

Israeli startup Taranis, focuses on providing a complete digital agronomy solution to farmers using aerial imagery technology across the US, Argentina, Brazil, Russia, Ukraine, and Australia. The company now monitors more than 20 million acres globally, 50% of which is located within the US.&nbsp;The startup captures aerial images using UAVs, which can be analyzed and compared using its own platform, and allows farmers to make precise decisions about planting. The company also operates an area called the “AgroBrain”, which allows precise identification of crop issues. The company claims to account for 70% of the global crop market and equips farmers with the tools to address issues in real time. Similar to peers like Ceres Imaging, Taranis has partnered with incumbent players like John Deere, Syngenta, BASF, and Climate Field View to expand its product reach. As such, Taranis is regarded as a promising startup in global precision agriculture.&nbsp;In 2018, the company expanded its footprint in the US when it acquired Mavrx, a US startup providing aerial imagery solutions to local farmers. Mavrx ran into financial difficulties and consolidation of the two companies yielded attractive opportunities. The consolidation allowed Taranis to integrate Mavrx’s product (full field imagery product with highest resolution on the market) into its platform, thereby fulfilling Taranis’ aim of providing a complete solution. The acquisition strengthened Taranis' offering rather than differentiating it. Taranis believes that further consolidation is likely with imagery and AI solutions.&nbsp;In July 2020, amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, the company raised USD 30 million in Series C funding. Key Investors included Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Micron Ventures, and Vertex Ventures Israel. The company expects to use the funds to create more relevant scouting products for growers through its platform and to also look towards expanding into Asia.&nbsp;Previously in January 2023, Taranis introduced <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/taranis-introduces-acreforward-setting-a-new-standard-for-crop-intelligence-301734306.html">AcreForward</a> which provides unprecedented leaf-level insights into growers' crops at higher frequency throughout the season and captures opportunities in every acre to help ag retailers drive more value from every acre. In <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/taranis-launches-ag-assistant-to-transform-farm-decision-making-302198624.html">July 2024</a>, The company has introduced Ag assistant, powered by a generative AI model that integrates data sources from various modalities – including images, text and audio – and with a profound understanding of agronomy.

Taranis

Based in Canada, TELUS Agriculture offers integrated agriculture software solutions to increase profits of farmers and ranchers, agri-businesses, and agri-food, consumer goods and retail companies. Some of the farm management software solutions provided by the company are: Farm at Hand (crop management platform), TKXS (data management), Agrian (precision and informed decision making)&nbsp; and Muddy Boots (food traceability and supply chain management). As of July 2021, TELUS provides its solutions across Canada, the USA, Mexico, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Slovakia, Armenia, Germany, China, and Australia.In July 2021, TELUS along with Rabobank, a Dutch food and agriculture bank, acquired Conservis to deliver a more robust Conservis platform to cater a diverse range of crops and livestock leveraging the former’s know-how and relationships across the food industry value chain and the latter’s portfolio of innovative digital farming technologies and solutions.&nbsp;Founded in 2009, Conservis via its web and mobile platform, provides farmers with planning tools, real-time data capture, and analytics to support better decision making and efficient reporting. Having launched as a permanent crop management platform for tree nuts, the platform has expanded its capabilities to fit crop types such as citrus and grapes.&nbsp; Since 2018, Rabo AgriFinance, a Rabobank subsidiary, has also been a development partner for Conservis to enhance the platform’s financial reporting capabilities.&nbsp;In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27853">March 2024</a>, The company&nbsp; has completed the acquisition of Proagrica, a provider of agronomic and business data solutions.Key customers and partnershipsIn <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/decisive-farming-telus-agriculture-grainfox-140000751.html">October 2023</a>, The company has partnered with GrainFox announced a new partnership to bring more digital grain trade and sell options to Canadian farmers, providing technology-based solutions to support the ongoing transformation of Canada’s agriculture industry.

TELUS  Agriculture

Arable was established with the aim of providing measurements, insight, and predictions that enable growers to address risks with crop management. The key market of focus has been the US, though the company’s product has been used in 39 different countries.The company provides real-time data updates on irrigation and weather, such as reports on plants and crop management, to allow users to make informed decisions, while also being able to precisely measure different farming-related data such as temperature and humidity. Thus, the company falls under the categories of precision and smart farming.The company’s product, Arable Mark, is an irrigation management tool whichsynthesizes climate, plant, and soil data to produce visualizations. Through a web dashboard and smartphone app, Arable Mark exposes precipitation, crop water deficit, soil moisture, chilling hours, and other metrics gathered from sensors. Customers using Arable’s platform have reportedly shown to reduce irrigation by upto 50% and pesticide usage by 15%. In May 2023, the company commercially introduced <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/18120">Arable Mark 3 </a>which includes a 5 MP camera, an optional wind anemometer, and advanced plant and environmental sensing capabilities.The company’s customer base is quite broad in the agriculture value chain, and includes farmers, advisors, insurers, processors, lenders, and governments that find Arable useful to gauge facts on the ground in real time, and in turn reduce risk and increase certainty with decision making.Key customers and partnershipsAs of July 2022, the company serves over 400 customers across 40 countries, and has partnered with agribusiness players like <a href="https://www.bayer.com/en/">Bayer </a>, <a href="http://basf.com/">BASF </a>, and <a href="https://www.nutrien.com/">Nutrien </a>, as well as large consumer food companies such as <a href="https://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/aclk?sa=L&amp;ai=DChcSEwjZmt7Vz8HsAhVB5bMKHZDRA-QYABAAGgJxbg&amp;ohost=www.google.com&amp;cid=CAESQOD2vDo-TeLvYzetoyv9iGSw4AnEyiwfscK9vNdjRJ0JPSZXAOBHMYcmrQDPGFTkEl8yzB3t5tB0WHRWzqyKtJE&amp;sig=AOD64_30Xpx6__U8VgKUxkOFpPHuSo99bw&amp;q&amp;adurl&amp;ved=2ahUKEwj--M3Vz8HsAhVCLKwKHa4MAgUQ0Qx6BAgUEAE">Mars </a>, <a href="https://www.lambweston.com/">Lamb Weston </a>, and <a href="https://www.tweglobal.com/">Treasury Wine Estates </a>, as well as fellow startups like <a href="https://www.planet.com/">Planet </a>, <a href="https://www.terramera.com/">Terramera </a>, and <a href="https://www.pivotbio.com/">Pivot Bio </a>primarily to expand the reach of its platform.In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/32961">August 2024</a>, Arable collaborated with Google to leverage agritech to promote water conservation and crop productivity among Nebraska farms.Funding and financials<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11852">In July 2022 </a>, Arable raised USD 40 million in Series C funding led by Galvanize Climate Solutions to support product development, delivery of new services, and international expansion.Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, the company’s sales grew by 4x during 2020 and 2022, while reporting a 300% sales growth in Q3 2020 alone.

Arable

The company’s aerial spectral imagery helps growers optimize water and fertilizer application, focusing on the midstream of the agriculture value chain. The company uses low-flying planes to capture and process these aerial spectral images. The images provide accurate and real-time information on the water and nutrient status of every plant in the field. The company has been focusing on the US and Australia.&nbsp;Its technology can be applied to vineyards, orchards, and row crops like corn, soybeans, and wheat. The company is more of a Data-as-a-Service organisation where the grower will pay Ceres Imaging by the acre and receive imagery and necessary support to integrate the information with broader crop management practices. The company has partnered with established companies like John Deere and Climate FieldView, which find that Ceres Imaging’s solutions (pest and disease detection weeks ahead of human detection) align with their products and services.&nbsp;In <a href="https://www.crowdfundinsider.com/2023/03/203925-ai-enhanced-data-analytics-product-suite-ceres-imaging-now-available-to-agriculture-insurers-lenders/">March 2023</a>, The company has unveiled Risk Solutions product suite, designed to power the next generation of risk models for insurers and lenders.In 2019, Ceres Imaging significantly expanded its operations with irrigated row crops throughout the central and western US.&nbsp;During the period, Ceres also nearly doubled its share of the&nbsp;California&nbsp;specialty crop market, going from managing 10% to 18% of all specialty crop acres in the state.&nbsp;In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16918">March 2023</a>, The company also expanded its services to Portugal and Spain.

Ceres Imaging

<div>
 
 SWIIM (Sustainable Water and Innovative Irrigation Management) System, with the support of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and various US grant universities, operates multi-patented technology developed to manage agricultural water budgets, allowing farmers to efficiently allocate water. The company focuses on the midstream of the agricultural value chain, supporting farmers through their harvesting process. The company’s technology is being widely deployed across western US states.
 
 
 The company provides a device that integrates with existing water measurement tools such as water gauges and analyzes real-time water usage via telemetry, offering farmers information on exactly how much water is used for crops and how much goes back into the ground.
 
 
 The company’s system can be used for any crop and irrigation system, lending its product flexibility and scope for potential expansion beyond the US. 
 
 
 In 2018, SWIIM acquired farm management software OnFarm Systems, which operates a customizable dashboard presenting data collected from a range of different internet of things (IoT) sources (weather, pest control, crop models) on any online device. The acquisition provided SWIIM customers with a differentiated product. Moreover, OnFarm’s 500 clients across the United States, Europe, and Asia at the time were accessible to SWIIM.  
 
 
 In 2020, SWIIM issued its own certification to farmers for the sustainable use of water, conveying to consumers that produce was grown with sustainable water management practices. In addition, SWIIM also introduced its “Certified Water Balance Report”, providing growers with an audited account of their water use. The company’s niche focus on water management, alongside its efforts at differentiation via acquisitions, arms it with potential to broaden its reach.
 
 
 
</div>

SWIIM Systems

Start-ups providing smart machinery such as agricultural robots and autonomous tractors, as well as other smart hardware devices for crop and livestock management.

Operators of marketplaces connecting farmers, suppliers, buyers, experts and advisors to streamline the farming process.

Start-ups offering software and related hardware solutions for crop operation, crop modelling, weather forecasting, soil analysis, and overall irrigation management using sensors, big data, AI and machine learning.

Startups offering software and related hardware solutions that facilitate real time data tracking and sharing on animal weight, future weight forecasts, and animal health and behavioural analysis using RFID tags, sensors, big data, AI and machine learning.

Start-ups offering drone or satellite imagery to measure and monitor fields, spray pesticides, accurately present biological parameters, control the quality of sowing, etc.

Crop and livestock monitoring startups use AI for their analytics platform

Uses robots for harvesting, weeding, and related agricultural purposes

Uses data analytics and sensors and related technologies to provide crop and livestock monitoring insights

Provides solutions that maximizes efficiency throughout the agriculture value chain

IoT-enabled sensors are used in machinery and equipment to help with data collection

Tarfin

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