Queensland agtech startup DataFarming has raised $500,000 in a pre-Series A round led by Sydney VC Investible.
Co-founded in 2017 by serial entrepreneurs Tim and Peta Neale, DataFarming helps unlock the value of business data for agronomists and farmers.
The company serves more than 120,000 paddocks in 28,000 farms – 40% market penetration in the grain industry – in Australia and overseas markets, including the UK, South America, Africa and Europe.
The startup will use the capital to accelerate its sales and product development as it positions itself towards its $5 Million Series A Raise and continued global expansion.
Tim Neale DataFarming offers both a freemium solution and an enterprise-grade platform called Agri-Intelligence for larger companies and industrial partners.
“There are two key components that are critical to our continued growth: more products to better support our customers’ needs and expansion into new overseas markets hungry for digital farming.”
“We’ve been figuring out how to get technology adopted by a large number of farmers and now want to harness that traction.”
Their solutions include the cloud-based Digital Agronomist, which provides satellite imagery to farmers every five days to help manage variability, whether assessing crop yield in the field or over time, or making decisions about the use of fertilizers.
Investible climate tech investment analyst Ben Lindsay DataFarming has achieved a high level of trust among its users.
“Having successfully left their previous farming business in 2015, Peta and Tim have shown the tremendous growth of this market and an uncanny ability to speak a common language with their customers,” he said.
“During our due diligence process, we spoke to several farmers who verified the truth data with numerous competitors and found that DataFarming’s solutions consistently outperformed the expensive alternatives.”
Data Farming is the 9e early stage startup backed by the Investible Climate Tech Fund
Co-director of the fund, Tom Kline, said there was a strong alignment between the fund and the agricultural solution the Neales have built.
“With global agricultural productivity projected to fall by 17% by 2050, solutions like the one DataFarming is building will determine humanity’s adaptability and mitigate the effects of climate change,” he said.
“We look forward to joining Tim, Peta and the talented DataFarming team to support their vision of transforming this vital industry.”
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