Investment in farm technologies was particularly buoyant, increasing 185% year-on-year and accounting for 60% of the total number of deals closed.
In agtech, produce quality control platform Clarifruit raised $12 million while more layoffs struck the food delivery sector.
The category’s strong fundraising performance underscores its potential to positively impact Asia-Pacific, especially when it comes to smallholder farmers.
Meanwhile, it’s more bad news for food delivery, with a quick-commerce startup shutting down and a major service leaving Australia.
India is by far the region’s most advanced farmtech ecosystem, while a Chinese agricultural drone service raised the biggest farmtech round in 2021.
Investors poured a record-breaking $15.2 billion into Asia-Pacific agrifoodtech startups in 2021; in 2022, the region continues to break records.
From old timers with mega deals to up-and-comers just entering the space, here are the ghost kitchen startups leading the pack of a growing if somewhat controversial segment of the food industry.
Gramophone has partnered with Yara Ventures-backed Jai Kisan to add loans to its full stack portfolio of services for India’s smallholder farmers.
Indian insect biotech startup Loopworm secures $3.4m seed round led by Omnivore and WaterBridge to scale up research and development and production.
Layoffs, cuts, and reorganizations continue across the foodtech industry, especially for restaurant-related businesses like Sweetgreen and Deliveroo.
Farmley, India’s dried fruit and nuts marketplace, secured $6m in Series A funding led by DSG Consumer Partners and Alkemi Growth Capital
The Netherlands-based animal and fish feed producer has acquired close to 94% in Indian aquatech company Eruvaka as impact fund Omnivore and Eruvaka team exit.
The US alt-dairy startup has posted the winning ₹6.38 billion ($79.8 million) bid to take over Sterling Biotech, which entered liquidation in 2019.
The tech-enabled parks are a joint project between India, Israel, the UAE, and the US.
The 7th Agritec Africa Conference was a three-day event showcasing agricultural technologies. Key sessions involved organic agriculture, soil health and its conservation, agri-mechanization and application of plasticulture.
General Mills invested $3 million more into regen ag, Lunchbox acquired another restaurant ordering platform, and Cox delved deeper into indoor farming.
Seed funding will enable the US- and India-based company to further develop its milk alternative made with mammalian cell cultured technology.
It also saw upstream agrifoodtech deal numbers surpass downstream deals for the first time, says Omnivore managing partner Mark Kahn.
It says revenue from its marketplace for new and used farm vehicles grew 7x over the past two years.
It’s digitalizing Asian and African agribusiness with software that helps mid- to large-size operations manage their data and finances.
