Singapore GPs lead round for Israeli drone scouting start-up

The fundraise was led by Singapore-based venture capital firms K3 Ventures and Vertex Growth, and also featured Japanese multinational Hitachi Group. Other investors include Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, Vertex Ventures Israel, Viola Group, Finistere Ventures, and Israeli crowd-funding portal OurCrowd. This follows a $30 million Series B round last year.

Founded in 2015, Taranis operates fleets of drones and low-flying aerial vehicles that capture high-resolution imagery with an artificial intelligence system able to help detect early signs of crop diseases, insect infestations, nutrient deficiencies, water damage, and other crop risk factors. It claims the system can cover an area of 400,000 square meters in just six minutes.

Taranis plans to use the capital to strengthen sales and marketing functions and launch operations in overseas markets. There are already users in the US, Argentina, Brazil, Russia, Ukraine, and Australia

“Our Indonesian colleagues and sugar plantation supervisors were impressed by the outcomes achieved during a week-long pilot – the first entry into Asia for Taranis," said MX Kuok, a managing director at K3 Ventures. “Taranis demonstrated best-in-class capabilities in identifying specific pests and diseases, which can drive early intervention and reduce the amount of crop protection products that ultimately enter into our food chain.”

Hock Chuan Tam, a managing director at Vertex Growth, added that he anticipated consolidation among start-ups operating in the agricultural technology sector due to a fall in demand by enterprise customers.   

Other VC-backed start-ups using computer vision and artificial intelligence technology to make crop monitoring more efficient include Israel’s Prospera and US-based Ceres Imaging and Arable. Earlier this week, Propeller Aero, which provides drone surveying services for industrial worksites in Australia, closed a $18.3 million round.

Vertex Growth is the growth-stage focused investor that is a part of the Vertex network of funds. Investments this year include Singaporean supply chain finance start-up Validus and Taiwan media streaming company M17 Entertainment. K3 Ventures, which manages the Orion Fund, has also invested in Validus as well as artificial intelligence-driven customer service talkbot Wiz.ai focusing on the Southeast Asian market.

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• Topics
• Southeast Asia
• Technology
• Expansion
• MENA
• Indonesia
• Agritech
• Vertex Growth
• K3 Ventures