Deep tech start-up AgNext raises US $21 million in Series A from Alpha Wave Incubation

NEW DELHI 21 August 2021: AgNext Technologies, India's leading deep-tech agritech start-up, announced that it has raised a total of USD 21 million in Series A funding.

The round was led by Alpha Wave Incubation (AWI) fund, which is backed by DisruptAD and managed by Falcon Edge. Existing investors Omnivore and Kalaari Capital also participated in the Series A round.

This investment marks the largest Series A funding received by an Indian agritech startup to date. AgNext is also AWI's first investment in India's booming agritech sector. In this round, AgNext has also delivered a 5X exit to a-IDEA NAARM, India's first agribusiness incubator, managed by the National Academy of Agricultural Research Management (NAARM).

The lack of quality assessment solutions leads to approximately $90 billion in losses globally in agricultural trade. This results in lower profit margins for farmers and higher pricing for consumers. Current quality analysis processes are manual which make them costly and time-consuming with lower accuracy (up to ~60 percent).

AgNext solves the quality analysis problem through its proprietary, in-house technology products. Through a mix of AI, ML, Internet of Things (IoT), and advanced data analysis, AgNext provides rapid food quality assessment through its full-stack 'Qualix' platform. By delivering real-time accuracy of up to 99 percent, AgNext helps to bring trust, speed, and transparency to the agriculture value chain.

AgNext is the only player with a physical as well as chemical analysis solution applicable across a wide basket of commodities including grains, spices, tea, milk, and animal feed.

The company has collected over 2 million food samples over the last 4 years across multiple categories, creating a unique and massive AI datasets. AgNext initiated the commercialization of its products earlier this year. With a 100% pilot to paid customer conversion, the company boasts of top-tier clients such as ITC, Godrej, NAFED, among others. 

With this new capital infusion, AgNext will now enter newer commodities, strengthen pan-India presence and expand to international markets such as the Middle East, Europe, and South Asia. The funds will also be used for the development of its tech platform Qualix, to enable quality-driven trade transactions across the food value chains. Additionally, the company will also establish a new office in Abu Dhabi for deeper penetration into the targeted markets by diversifying its commodities portfolio and accelerating innovation to make food trade better, fairer, and more secure in the new geographies.

Taranjeet Singh Bhamra, Founder & CEO of AgNext shared, "In the era of agriculture 4.0, the demand for better market linkages and secure food trade is driving deeper penetration of technology in agricultural ecosystems. As first movers in the agricultural deep-tech space, we have established market leadership in India through our novel AI-based technologies that assure quality-based food trade across value chains. The deep-tech enabled value created by AgNext for our partners has been instrumental in driving our growth story.”

“Today, we are ready to scale our operations globally and delighted to partner with Alpha Wave Incubation (AWI), to accelerate our R&D initiatives and build a robust international presence," Bhamra added.

Anirudh Singh, Managing Director at Alpha Wave Incubation (AWI) fund commented, "With its unique deep-tech solutions, AgNext is poised to transform the agri value chain at a global scale. We believe AgNext will be a global leader in the agri-tech space and look forward to working with them."

Subhadeep Sanyal, Partner at Omnivore commented, "By focusing initial years on refining their deep-tech solutions, they have been successful in building unique AI-based technologies and delivering exponential value to all stakeholders. We continue to back AgNext in their mission to change the paradigm of rapid quality estimation of commodities and enabling quality based trade across geographies."

Mandar Dandekar, Principal at Kalaari Capital said, "AgNext has built uniquely integrated hardware and SaaS offerings that have transformed procurement operations throughout the value chain. Using deep-tech to build solutions to solve persisting legacy issues in food quality and trade is a monumental task and requires first principles thinking."

About AgNext

Set up in 2016, AgNext Technologies is a leading agritech start-up that provides deep-tech enabled solutions for food quality assessment, monitoring, and management. The company has innovated full-stack solutions, based on a unique integration of adaptive hardware, integrated software, and data analytics, which aim to solve quality-related issues in the post-harvest agriculture value chain. By developing the world's first technologies for standardizing food quality using AI, AgNext is bringing trust, speed, and transparency to the agriculture value chain.