Indigo Ag is World’s Biggest AgTech Startup
From Nanalyze:
The world’s biggest agtech startup
appears poised to grow even bigger this year with a multi-billion-dollar
valuation just four years after launching out of Boston. (When we
say “biggest”, we are using valuation to determine “biggest”. Valuation
refers to what investors are willing to pay for shares when they invest,
and consequently, these valuations will increase, decrease or stay the
same, based on the latest funding round.)
PitchBook Data, a firm that provides research and data on private markets, recently reported that Indigo Ag is looking to raise up to $300 million, which would give it a valuation of $3.5 billion. Founded in 2014, Indigo has already reaped $359 million
over five rounds (though the last was technically a continuation of a
Series D that reached $203 million last year), according to Crunchbase.
Pitchbook actually pegs equity funding slightly higher at $367 million.
Either way, Indigo currently carries a $1.4 billion valuation, per both PitchBook and fellow data firm CB Insights.
Credit: PitchBook
Timing is everything. About a week after we published our list of top-funded agtech startups last September, Indigo doubled its war chest to surpass vertical farming startup Plenty Inc.
as the world’s most well-funded agtech startup. Plenty has raised a
total of $226 million, including a $200 million round in 2017 from free-spending SoftBank. In fact, last year was a good one for agtech, a broadly defined technology sector that includes everything from agricultural robots to Internet of Things aquaculture. Pitchbook says a record of $1.8 billion was invested in agtech companies last year over 221 deals.
Microbes for Crops
Riding
that wave of investment is Indigo, which produces crop seeds—but not
just any seeds. Their seeds are coated with microbes, tiny organisms
that live in a symbiotic relationship with plants and soil, helping them
stay healthy in less-than-ideal conditions such as drought. Currently,
the company focuses on cotton, wheat, rice, corn and soybeans. We first
profiled Indigo in our list of agtech startups keeping us fed.
Indigo
doesn’t genetically modify the organisms but goes through a complex
process to find the best bugs for the job. It uses sophisticated genomic
sequencing and other methods to build an enormous database of genomic
information for thousands of microbes. The company then applies
algorithms and machine learning to predict which microbes are most
beneficial to the plant’s health. The best and brightest bugs are then
used in the company’s proprietary seed coatings.
Win for Wheat
Does
it actually work? Just this month Indigo released the latest yield data
for its second commercial season of growing Indigo Wheat (that’s
trademarked, by the way). Across 24 wheat fields in three states (Texas,
Oklahoma and Kansas), Indigo Wheat yielded 13 percent more than its
conventional cousin. The numbers are even better when the researchers
accounted for high-stress, low-yield conditions like droughts or intense
heat. The average yield, in that case, was 19 percent better.
Credit: Indigo Ag
In
one of those “meet the farmer” anecdotes, a grower in Oklahoma said
Indigo Wheat yielded 33 bushels per acre (we think bushel is roughly
equivalent to barrels of beer, but don’t quote us on that), while
everything else on the property produced 15 to 20 bushels per acre. And
that was over a season that experienced less than two inches of rain
over six months....MORE
