Disclosure: AFN’s parent company is AgFunder.
GROW, the Singapore-based agrifoodtech ecosystem builder backed by agrifoodtech investor AgFunder, has unveiled the 10 startups participating in the 2023 AgFunder GROW Impact Accelerator.
The accelerator launched in 2019 with the aim of supporting the growth of emerging technologies in the agrifood space while strengthening their efforts towards sustainability.
GROW chose this year’s startups from its largest-ever pool of applicants: 600 companies from 82 countries applied to the program, nearly double the number received for the previous cohort.
The 10 chosen startups focus on a range of themes including food as medicine, climate-smart agriculture, food system decarbonization, agri-fintech for financial inclusion of farmers, and planetary health. Half of the startups are led by women founders or have women in leadership roles.
Chosen startups are:
- AgriFi (India): Digital credit platform increasing financial inclusion for smallholder farmers and reducing lending risk for institutions.
- Amatera (France): Accelerating the breeding of climate-resilient perennial crops, starting with coffee and woody crops.
- CarbonFarm (France): Providing satellite-verified carbon credits to help rice farmers accurately quantify their emissions and fund their transition to sustainable practices.
- DHF Platforms (Vietnam): Smallholder-driven fresh produce platform delivering traceability, transparency and tech-optimized logistics to reduce waste.
- Exosomm (Israel): Improving health with a novel bioactive food ingredient containing natural miRNA, milk exosomes.
- FaunaTech (India): Novel smartphone-based diagnostics platform for rapid testing of milk and bovine health at the farmgate.
- IIF (Australia): A platform enabling everyday folks to invest in agriculture without owning a farm.
- The Kawa Project (US): Upcycling coffee waste to create valuable, less-toxic cocoa powder alternatives.
- NTP Technologies (US): Enabling on-site, salt-free, sustainable and organic nitrogen fertilizer production.
- OlsAro (Sweden): Developing salt-tolerant crops using AI-enabled trait discovery.
Participation in the 20-week programme comes with a $100,000 investment in each company from AgFunder along with access to AgFunder’s co-investors and GROW’s network.
“When we launched the GROW Impact Fund, the vision was to attract the smartest, most innovative entrepreneurs with a passion for revolutionizing the food system to improve the lives of the most vulnerable people on the planet. I am delighted to say we have again achieved this goal,” says AgFunder’s founding partner Michael Dean.
“With climate change beginning to materially impact crop production, animal health and productivity, fisheries and water availability, particularly in emerging markets, we have no time to waste in accelerating these potentially transformative technologies.”
The programme’s demo day will coincide with the Singapore International Agri-Food Week which will run from 30 October to 3 November, 2023.
To learn more about the AgFunder GROW Impact Accelerator, click here.
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