Indian agtech start-up raises $5.9m Series A

Previously, it had raised $2 million in seed funding from Nexus Ventures Partners and Omnivore Partners last year. Both investors contributed to the current fundraise as well.

Founded in 2016, Intello offers a smart phone-based solution that helps analysts in the food processing industry grade products. It says its customers include Indian corporates, the Asia Pacific divisions of global food product manufacturers like Dole and Ocean Spray, and grocery e-commerce companies in China and Southeast Asia.

Intello utilizes machine learning algorithms that can help categorize the level of freshness of different fruits and vegetables, comparing live images with those from an existing cloud database, usually in the form of a white label version of its product.

The start-up claims its solution leads to reduced human errors in food grading and an increase in the overall freshness of product batches. Traditional methods are usually manual and study a sample from a larger batch of fruits or vegetables.

"This funding will help us accelerate growth in international markets, specifically the US and across Asia Pacific. There has been a significant spike in interest from these markets over the past few months, which was further accelerated by COVID-19, and now we have the firepower to go after these opportunities," Intello co-founder Milan Sharma told the Press Trust of India.

Other Indian agtech start-ups that similarly work on digitizing different aspects of fresh food supply chains include DeHaat, Freshokartz, Agricx, NinjaCart and WayCool Foods. 

Saama Capital, an early-stage investor in Indian start-ups, closed its fourth fund at $100 million in 2018. Grow, an agricultural and food technology accelerator in Singapore, was launched last year. It is a joint venture between Australia's Rocket Seeder and AgFunder, a US-based agricultural and food technology VC firm. SVG Ventures-Thrive is an accelerator that targets agricultural technology start-ups around the world and connects them with US-based companies in the food industry.

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• Topics
• South Asia
• Early-stage
• Technology
• India
• Agritech
• Saama Capital