Agri-Analytics Startup AgNext Gets Funding From Omnivore

Impact venture fund Omnivore this week has made its second round of investment in Chandigarh-based agri-analytics startup AgNext. The amount invested has not been disclosed by either of the parties. As part of this funding, Subhadeep Sanyal, principal at Omnivore, will join AgNext’s board. The venture capital firm Omnivore had announced making the first close of its Fund II at $46 million earlier in 2018, and is now targeting the final close at $75 million. They are planning to close 16-20 deals from fund II and are looking at ticket sizes between $1 and $2 million. “We will also be looking at fintech deals in companies focussed on farmers as beneficiaries, food processing companies that are sourcing directly from farmers and also farmer-focussed clean tech companies,” Mark Kahn, founding partner at Omnivore, told a financial newspaper. AgNext was cofounded by IIT Kharagpur alumni Taranjeet Singh Bhamra, Mrigank Sharad and Deepak Jaiswal in 2016. According to their official website, the startup was incubated at Science and Technology Entrepreneurs Park at IIT Kharagpur, and was acceleration by a-IDEA, managed by the National Academy of Agricultural Research Management. AgNext co-founder Taranjeet Singh Bhamra told a news portal, “We aim to utilise the recent Series A round of funding for expanding our product in the data analytics in agriculture space by creating a combination of both hardware and software. We further aim to open two international offices in Singapore and Canada in the next six months from now and will further emphasise on strengthening our R&D base at IIT Kharagpur and Kolkata." The startup collects spatial, temporal and spectral data to provide sensing solutions across the agriculture and food value chain. The firm has developed an integrated digital platform through which growers and food processors can improve their productivity, quality and profitability. AgNext is currently focused on horticulture, floriculture and plantation crops.