Source: Virtual-Strategy Magazine
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — AgDNA, an Australian precision agriculture company, is launching a $2.4 million financing campaign on AgFunder, the equity investing platform for agriculture and agriculture technology (agtech). AgDNA has already entered the U.S. market and will use funds to drive its U.S. and global expansion.
AgDNA has developed the world’s first automated data processing and analytics platform to deliver agronomic insights from in-field farm machinery directly to grower’s smartphones and tablets. The company has proven and scalable cloud-based mobile data management technology that’s being used in 156 countries to manage 67,000 fields with a total of 2.8 million acres under management.
With farming growing smarter, there’s so much disparate on-farm data being amassed from precision ag equipment, and it’s often tough to capture what matters and weed out what doesn’t. Paul Turner, the CEO of AgDNA, has a term for this overabundance of information: “data overload.”
“You’d be hard pressed to find another system that does what AgDNA does — automating data collected from farm machinery and drawing meaningful insights from that information — and at this level of sophistication,” said Turner, who has spent the last 15 years in the precision agriculture industry before starting AgDNA in 2013.
The company's core product is a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) white label solution supplied to global equipment dealer networks for major agriculture OEMs. It has worldwide data licensing agreements with the top OEMs (e.g. Deere, Case), representing over 80% of large scale farm machinery. AgDNA’s target market is 6 countries covering over 500 million acres with an estimated equipment dealer network of over 3,000 stores. The company also has a widely adopted consumer-facing app for Apple and Android.
AgDNA’s solution fits into a larger story about agriculture. Agriculture has undergone four revolutions, said Turner. The first was mechanization, followed by plant nutrition, and then genetics. The fourth, he says, is data. “The data revolution is going to maximize the benefits of the first three.”
“We are excited to be hosting AgDNA on AgFunder as they are uniquely positioned as partner to the biggest names in farm equipment manufacturing to deliver their cloud-based data analytic technology to farmers around the world,” said Michael Dean, co-founder and head of origination at AgFunder.
About AgFunder
AgFunder is an equity-based investment platform created specifically to connect accredited investors with world-class agriculture and agtech investment opportunities from around the globe. Every project featured on AgFunder is evaluated for its economic and technical merits by an expert team of agriculture and business experts, providing potential investors access to some of the most promising agriculture investment opportunities.