Nongtian Guanjia will use the newly-raised capital to expand its business into more cities and build more services such as GPS
Gobi Partners has led a US$7 million round in Beijing-based agriculture drone-sharing platform Nongtian Guanjia.
The round was joined by existing investors, including GGV Capital, Shunwei Capital, the Zhen Fund and Yunqi Partners.
Nongtian Guanjia will use the fresh financing to expand to more cities in China, enhance its research team, and develop more agricultural services, including GPS and agricultural financing.
Founded in 2016, Nongtian Guanjia (which means ‘manager of farmland’ in Chinese) provides an app for farmers to book drones for a range of purposes. These include pesticide spraying and geographical data sharing. Once a drone has booked, the request will be sent to a drone service provider closest to the farmer.
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“The Chinese agricultural industry is backward in technology usage and faces the challenge of a shortage of labor, while pesticide misuse is a serious food safety issue. Nongtian Guanjia provides services that can help solve the labor shortage issue, increase efficiency and improve food quality,” said Jiang Tao, a managing partner at Gobi Partners, in an official press statement.
Currently, Nongtian Guanjia claims to have over 1,000 drone operation teams on its platform. Collectively, they offer over 5,000 agricultural drones.
Nongtian Guanjia operates in more than 10 provinces and nearly 1,000 villages, covering major agricultural areas, such as Heilongjiang, Hubei, Hunan, Shandong and Jiangsu.
These areas encompass a combined 666 million square meters of farmland. Nongtian Guanjia said it plans to expand this to 5.3 billion square meters by the end of this year.
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Image Credit: Nongtian Guanjia
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