Agricx Lab, an India based Agri-tech startup that uses smartphone imaging to assess quality of agri-produce has raised a seed round to support product development and expansion. This $0.5 Million round was led by Ankur Capital, an India focused VC fund with a significant AgriTech portfolio.

Agricx has developed a user-friendly mobile application that uses computer vision and artificial intelligence on images to yield objective, accurate and faster quality assessment of agri-produce.Their technology is being used across warehouses and paid pilots have been initiated with large buyers. The company is looking to expand its crop range and quality parameters to deliver an easily accessible, quantifiable and affordable solution for food produce quantification.

Agricx was founded in Oct 2016, with an aim to create a quick, accurate, portable & easy to use quality assessment tool that takes the subjectivity out of quality assessment and makes every transaction smoother & loss-less. Agricx currently offers a solution to warehouses and enterprise clients with a plan to expand across food produce supply chain.

“Globally there is a need to understand the quality of food that we eat. Much of global produce comes from geographies with low penetration of organized players, use of many different seed varieties and farming practices, and a multi-point value chain. Objectively determining quality at all points becomes all the more important. Technology that is easy to use, can be deployed along all points of the chain provides a critical transparency in food chains that today is hard to determine. Agricx has the potential to disrupt this market ”, said Dr. Ritu Verma, managing partner at Ankur Capital.

Speaking of Agricx founders, Ritesh Dhoot and Saurabh Kumar, Dr. Verma said, “They are seasoned professionals and passionate entrepreneurs, backed by a history of consistent delivery on business objectives in their previous roles. What the founders along with the team have demonstrated over such a short span is hugely impressive, and we're excited to be working together to create a truly world-class enterprise."

CIIE also participated in this investment with Ankur Capital.

Ankur Capital is a seed stage Investor. With this investment, Ankur Capital’s AgriFood Tech portfolio increases to seven. From Farm management software (Cropin Technologies), online agri-input distribution (BigHaat); sustainable bio-inputs (Suma Agro), cleantech cold chain (TESSOL) and super foods (Health Sutra), Ankur Capital’s portfolio companies span the gamut of the new wave of technologies originating in India.

To recall, last month Cambridge and Pune-based agri-tech startup KisanHub had raised $2.43 million in pre-Series A funding led by UK-based B2B tech venture capital firms Notion Capital and IQ Capital.

In November 2017, Bengaluru based agri-tech startup KrishiHub raised undisclosed seed funding from IIT-Kanpur INVENT accelerator and Villgro Innovation Fund.

In the same month, an another agri-tech startup Farmlink had raised seed funding from Pioneering Ventures, a Swiss-based incubator and investment firm, and Syngenta, a Swiss agribusiness firm. The startup is based out of Mumbai. Additionally, in the same month, Jindal Stainless launched accelerator program for agri-tech startups India, in association with Japan’s ANEW Holdings

Earlier, in August, Gurgaon-based agritech startup Crofarm had raised Rs 5 crore in a pre-Series A round from Rajan Anandan, Google India MD, and Jitendra Gupta, and PayU India MD, among others.
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