AgroScout, an Israeli agtech startup developing AI-driven cloud-based farming management platform, announced securing $7.5 million in Series A funding. The investment was led by none other than Kibbutz Yotvata, with additional investors, including: Vincent Tchenguiz’s Agriline, Kibbutz Yiron, The Trendlines Group, the Israeli Innovation Authority, and several private investors, also getting in on the round.
Sustainable and remote farming
The AgroScout platform collects data to create powerful analytics for actionable insights in crop management. AgroScout monitors the crop from emergence stand count, through canopy coverage estimates, and plant biomass, throughout the season. The platform also continuously monitors for pests and disease, decreasing pesticide use by early detection when infestation levels are low and curative treatments are highly effective, predicting regional outbreak tendencies. According to the company, the platform enables improved yield predictions prior to harvest, and delivers farmers, agribusinesses, and food manufacturers an affordable way to build more competitive, sustainable, and environment-friendly food and agriculture supply chains.
AgroScout CEO Simcha Shore said: “Our decision to rely fully on stable off-the-shelf hardware has paid off and allowed us to focus our efforts on our remote agronomy analytics, positioning AgroScout as a true anywhere, anytime provider. We are now proud to bring on new partners to expand our platform to almost any field crop and to offer sustainable and efficient remote agronomy services to most of the 500 million unserved growers.”
AgroScout adds advanced AI-driven cloud computing technologies to the farmer’s toolkit, which enables the nearly 500 million unserved farms an efficient and sustainable way to manage their crops. The AgroScout platform offers 5 layers of interlaced data analysis to counter yield loss. It does so by leveraging user-generated data, collected with off-the-shelf drones and mobile phones, to provide an affordable early detection agronomy solution. According to the Israeli agtech startup, its solution eliminates the need for costly drones, field operators and long training. Farmers purchase their own low cost drones and receive minimal training to get started. The company’s uniqueness lies in its low cost data collection and in the simplicity of the system for the grower.
AgroScout was founded in 2017 by CEO Simcha Shore, and has ongoing projects and partnerships under way in the U.S., Israel, Latin America, and South Africa. Vincent Tchenguiz has high thoughts about the company he backed, saying that "Agroscout not only serves millions of growers worldwide, it also serves the planet. Its top of the line AI-based platform makes any farmer's life mission of crop protection easier and more efficient, all while complying with de-carbonizing the global economy."
