Agritech start-up CropIn Technology raises $8 million in a Series B funding

Agritech start-up CropIn Technology Solutions has raised $8 million in a Series B funding from Chiratae Ventures (formerly IDG Ventures India) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Strategic Investment Fund (London and Seattle). Both have invested $4 million each in the company. The latest round has taken the total funding of the firm so far to $12 million. This will be used to scale CropIn's SmartFarm technology platform globally.  It is currently present in 29 countries."The impact of CropIn for their global customers based on the unique data sets captured by the platform is staggering," said Karan Mohla, executive director, Chiratae Ventures India Advisors. 

The potential to revolutionise agriculture leveraging technology and machine learning has never been greater, and we believe the company will continue to pioneer this industry for years ahead," said Karan Mohla, executive director, Chiratae Ventures India Advisors.

CropIn has so far digitised more than 3.1 million acres of farmland through its various software-as-a-service offerings. It provides digital-based agriculture services to companies such as McCain and BigBasket.

"As a SaaS company, geography has never been a limiting factor for expanding our customer base. We are active in 29 countries throughout Asia, Africa, Latin America, and in select European markets. As ground-truth information from these geographies continues to fill our data lake, it provides insights that create a paradigm shift in the agriculture ecosystem globally," said CropIn Founder and Chief Executive Officer Krishna Kumar.

Agritech has become a booming sector with investors lining up to invest in such start-ups. According to Nasscom, in 2016, more than 350 agritech start-ups raised $300 million in investment globally, of which Indian investment accounted for 10 per cent.