Fundings-in-Brief: Advanced Animal Diagnostics Raises $1.7m, Farmland Partners Acquires $197m Property, more

Advanced Animal Diagnostics Raises $1.7m in Top-up Financing

Advanced Animal Diagnostics, a company developing tools to diagnose livestock disease on the farm, has raised a $1.7m equity top-up funding from existing investors. The investors committed to the company’s $15 million Series C in December 2014, including Cultivian Sandbox, Kansas Bioscience Authority, and Middleland Capital. The North Carolina-based company aims to help cut back on the number of antibiotics administered to livestock on farms. The technology uses the animal’s immune system response to identify and determine the stage of infections. The company has raised a total of $36 million in funding, according to CrunchBase.

Insect Food Brand Exo Raises $4m Series A

Protein derived from insects is hopping its way into the mainstream—or at least into celebrities’ portfolios. Cricket protein brand Exo closed a $4 million Series A round with rapper Nas and endurance athlete Amelia Boone, alongside existing investors. The funding will be used to increase Exo’s presence in the US retail market, scale its production, and expand its product line. According to the company’s founders, educating consumers about the benefits of consuming insect proteins has been one of their biggest challenges. To read more about Exo and another insect protein company that recently closed a funding deal with Arielle Zuckerberg, click here.

UK Ag Chemical Discovery Company Redag Raises $2m

Redag Crop Protection, an ag chemical discovery company, raised a $2 million seed round from existing investors Enterprise Ventures and Seneca Partners, a startup funding firm. Acceleris Capital, a Manchester-based corporate financing boutique, arranged the funding. Redag claims to offer a novel chemistry approach, which reduces development times, reduces redundancy in testing, and reduces the cost of the discovery-to-market cycle. To learn more about the company and its origins, head over to AgFunderNews.

Cookaroo Raises Undisclosed Round with Angel Investors

Bangalore-based food tech startup Cookaroo recently closed a funding round with a group of angel investors for an undisclosed amount. The company sources freshly prepared meals from 15 different commercial kitchens and delivers them to local customers. The new round of funding will be used to enhance technology development while expanding into Bangalore and Hyderabad. According to the company, its platform not only addresses consumers’ demand for fresh food delivery, but it also helps food producers find a profitable use for excess food production.

General Mills’ Investment Arm Funds California Cottage Cheese Company Good Culture

301 Inc., the venture capital arm of global food company General Mills, has invested $2.1 million in Good Culture, a California-based food startup offering high protein, low sugar, and thickener-free cottage cheese products. New York-based CAVU Venture Partners also led the round alongside 301 Inc. The product is made form grass-fed milk and non-GMO ingredients. The venture firm has made similar investments in plant-based protein developer Beyond Meat and kale chips producer Rhythm Superfoods.

M&A

Bayer Acquires Digital Farming Software Provider proPlant

Bayer has acquired proPlant, a plant health diagnosis and infection level warning service provider, marking another step in the global agriculture company’s expansion into farm digitalization. Based in Germany, proPlant started as a spinoff company run by employees of Münster University’s Institute of Geoinformatics. The company will join Bayer’s growing Digital Farming department. Last year it acquired Zoner, a Canadian geoinformation system from IntelMax, providing the German agribusiness with a software platform that can evaluate and provide a graphic representation of satellite images in selected agricultural regions in Canada, the US, France, Germany, Ukraine, Russia, and Brazil over a three-decade time frame. Read our interview with Bayer CropScience CEO here.

Foodtech Startup InnerChef Acquires EatonGo, Flavor Labs

Big data food delivery startup InnerChef has acquired two food tech companies: Gurgaon-based Flavour Labs and Bangalore-based EatOnGo. The acquisition of FlavourLabls enables InnerChef to enter the mobile kitchen space while EatOnGo opens up the company’s on-demand meal service. InnerChef offers a variety of ready-to-eat meals from a variety of cuisines, including it’s dessert-focused platform Indulge by InnerChef. In Fall 2015, the company closed a $1.66 million investment round with a group of individual investors.

Farmland Partners Closes $197m Farm Acquisition Deal

Farmland real estate company Farmland Partners has finalized the acquisition of 118 farms encompassing over 22,000 acres in Illinois for a total consideration of $50 million. As of March 2016, the company owns and controls over 250 contract farms covering an aggregate of 107,888 acres located throughout the Midwest, South, and Eastern regions. The land is currently in production, farming a variety of crops like soybeans, corn, wheat, rice, and sunflower.

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