Southeast Asia provides exciting opportunities for agritech startups. Investors are definitely not ignoring this

In Southeast Asia, the agricultural industry has contributed greatly to tackling some of the greatest challenges the region has faced.

According to the OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2017-2026, “The development of the agricultural and fisheries sectors1 has contributed to the improvements in food security, and both sectors remain a key part of food security policy for regional policymakers. In this way, agricultural and fisheries policy settings are interlinked with food security objectives.”

The region provides plenty of opportunities to explore and challenges to tackle for tech companies. Singapore is definitely not an exception in this matter; with its focus on innovation, we have seen several startups offering groundbreaking tech. These companies aim to make a change in various ways, from helping farmers improve yield to connecting F&B businesses to suppliers through an online platform.

Within the e27 startup database, we recorded at least 20 active agritech startups operating in Singapore.

While we aim to list down some of the most well-funded agritech startups in the country, it is also important to note that many of these companies are keeping their funding rounds undisclosed.

Also Read: Meet the 10 agritech, foodtech startups pitching for Future Food Asia’s US$100K grand prize

The following is a list of the most well-funded agritech startups in Singapore, based on their disclosed funding rounds as recorded in the e27 database.

We will start with the two companies that have raised millions of US Dollars:

Chemopower Technology Pte Ltd

Funding raised: US$10 million in Series A funding round from undisclosed investors (2016)

Chemopower Technology is a tech company which provides efficient and cost-effective solutions to identify chemical compositions via novel approaches.

The services that it offers include Data Analysis Service, Herb Data Inquire Service, and Universal Chemical Analyses Platform.

“To this end, ChemoPower developed a software that can reconstruct pure components’ spectra and its concentration without prior information using solely experimental data, without any simulation or peak matching,” the company explains in the e27 startup database.

“Our solution is built on the foundation of chemometrics: mathematical techniques based on statistics and optimisation method to find local/global optima of a system and is crystallised from the knowledge of more than 200 International Journals on chemometrics-related algorithms,” it continues.

The founding team was awarded the Gold Award for the High Performance Computing (HPC) Quest 2003 in Singapore, hosted by IBM.

Overdrive IoT

Funding raised: US$2.9 million in Series A funding round from Tin Men Capital (2019)

Overdrive describes itself as a true Internet of Things (IoT) platform that manages the information flow from a multitude of sensors, ranging from complex machines such as an automobile to a simple mobile device.

It also manages information flow from cloud platform that allows companies and developers to easily access the information to build smart applications.

In the automobile, transportation and logistics industry, Overdrive has a widely tested range of sensors that reads the engine diagnostics, driving behaviour and location of any vehicles.

For the B2B sector, Overdrive is enabling fleet operators and fleet managers to better manage their vehicle assets.

Also Read: Agritech is giving a globally vital industry a facelift, startups take center stage

In addition to Chemopower Technology and Overdrive, the following companies have also disclosed their funding rounds:

Brightree

Funding raised: US$350,000 in seed funding round by undisclosed investor(s) (2013)

Brightree provides an industrial IoT platform that is described as easily customisable for most industrial IoT applications such as marine, plantation, and factory automation.

Gaining experience from a remote oil well monitoring project for Schlumberger, the founders developed the unified platform for remote monitoring and ubiquitous control of industrial types of machinery. They formed the corporation with the assistance of the Singapore government’s Spring TECS grant.

The company provides innovative and quality satellite solutions with applications in remote engine monitoring and diagnostics, remote fuel management, agriculture plantation yield monitoring as well as asset tracking.

Zeemart

Funding raised: US$200,000 in pre-seed funding round from Neeraj Sundarajoo (2016)

Zeemart is a B2B sourcing platform for the F&B industry, with a mission to enable businesses make smarter purchasing decisions via its e-procurement platform.

Buyers will be able to view catalogs online and place order for suppliers to take. Suppliers are also given an app to manage deliveries. All the process is automatically recorded, enabling buyers to manage their time more effectively.

MapGage

Funding raised: US$50,000 in pre-seed funding round from an undisclosed investor (2016)

MapGage is a cloud-based solution that enables clients to integrate drone maps, blueprints, sensors, and field observations. It aims to increase the practical and operational value of drone-acquired data.

In addition to agriculture, its services are also used in industrial inspections, construction, infrastructure maintenance, and golf clubs.

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Image Credit: Skull Kat on Unsplash

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