◊ By Pure & Eco India

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CropIn, a global artificial intelligence and data-led agri-tech organisation empowering stakeholders to reimagine agriculture with data, has raised US$20 million in a Series C funding round led by ABC World Asia, an Asia-focused private equity fund dedicated to evidence-based impact investing.

Current investors Chiratae Ventures, Invested Development and Ankur Capital also took part in the round. New investors include CDC Group and Pratithi Investment Trust.

CropIn will use this capital for global expansion, while continuing to innovate on its machine learning-based predictive analytics platform, SmartRisk to further strengthen its artificial intelligence capabilities.

CropIn will also penetrate deeper in its target markets worldwide. Recently, CropIn set up an Amsterdam office, and will be hiring local leaders to drive growth in the European market.

CropIn’s data-driven farming solutions allow enterprises and growers to ‘maximise per-acre value’. Its farm data and agronomy management platform, SmartFarm, enables stakeholders to improve efficiency, productivity, predictability, and sustainability of their crop value-chains.

SmartFarm enables agri-enterprises to conform to food safety standards; thereby ensuring farm-to-fork traceability. The platform enables growers to adopt sustainable farming to build long term economic viability and resiliency for local farming communities.

CropIn has collaborated with several global players in agriculture, including development finance institutions and government entities in 52 countries, to drive their digital and sustainability goals.

CropIn’s SmartRisk platform enhances underwriting and risk assessment, enabling banks, insurance providers and other financial institutions to make informed underwriting decisions, identify new markets and expand product portfolios to service high-volume low-ticket opportunities.

By analysing farm-related data for over 388 crops with nearly 9,500 variants across trillions of data points that grow every day, SmartRisk helps achieve high prediction accuracy at a plot-level. It does this by blending computer vision with algorithms, on multispectral imagery from satellites and drones, field scouting data, and hyperlocal weather.

Small farmers associated with CropIn’s clientele also witnessed their crop yields increasing by nearly 25% in the first year and subsequently experienced optimised yield improvements in the following years, by integrating the recommended advanced agricultural techniques and quality inputs into their farming practices through CropIn’s agri-tech platforms.

“The robust, predictive power of digitalisation offers huge potential for the agriculture industry to leapfrog its many challenges in the coming years. The industry is capturing more data than ever, on agronomy, weather and logistics to market price volatility, which has helped reduce acute data gaps throughout the value chain. In order to improve yields, maximise production and improve resilience and sustainability, agri-businesses are relying on innovative agri-tech solutions like artificial intelligence, data analytics, and the Internet of things. We are excited to develop the AI-Culture,” says Krishna Kumar, Founder and CEO of CropIn.