Kenya’s Tulaa Set To Battle 7 Other Start-Ups At World Agri-Tech Innovation Summiit

Picked from more than 150 international entries, 8 early-stage start-ups are set to battle it out for a $250,000 investment from Radical Growth at the World Agri-Tech Pitch Day and Radicle Challenge.

The event, running for its second year, will happen on the 18th of March 2019.

The winner will emerge on the next day, March 19, as the World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit takes centre stage. The winning start-up will also present to over 1,200 worldwide agribusiness leaders as the Summit Technology Showcase that will go down on Wednesday, March 20, 2019.

The judges listed to decide the fate of the startups include Radicle’s Kirk Haney, Arama Kukutai (Finistere Ventures), Geoff Kneen (Bayer Crop Science), Mai Komatsu (Corteva AgriScience) and Adrian Percy (an independent adviser). They were also responsible for evaluating the submissions and picking the finalists.

Kirk Haney, Radicle Growth managing partner had this to say, “Once again, we saw a fantastic response for participation in the Pitch Day competition, with hundreds of entries from innovators around the world, now is an exciting time for agric tech innovators and investors, and we’re delighted to support their route to market with this platform to showcase their solutions and to benefit from our $250k investment and mentoring. We look forward to the presentations and to working with the selected winner.”

Meet the 8 finalists.

1. Tulaa – Kenya

This start-up has set-up a marketplace for smallholder farmers in Africa to have access to credit, training, buyers e.t.c. Via the use of mobile tech and artificial intelligence, Tulaa aids farmers to buy inputs like fertilizers to be paid for later, to get trained on agric practices and to locate buyers when its time for harvest.

2. Traive – United States

This agritech solution grants credit to farmers linking them to lenders and offering ML-based credit risk assessment and monitoring. Traive ensures farmers are exposed to modern technology to offer a novel and fair credit risk assessment, making affordable funding possible for their businesses.

3. Tarfin – Turkey

This start-up is blessed with a technology that focuses on immediate, competitive point-of-sale credit terms for farmers’ input purchases. With its proprietary algorithms and an extensive retail network, the Turkish firm’s machine-learning-based credit algorithms immediately assesses a farmer’s probability of repayment. Data are considered farm-level and transaction–wise, making sure that the company converts more leads into successful sales.

4. Napigen – United States

Another one from the US to prove the country is not messing around when it comes to Agritech. This start up makes use of mitochondrial CRISPR genome editing. The company’s aim and objective is to create a brand new platform for hybrid wheat seed production by making provision for best male sterile and restoration lines that stand out in production by its genome editing tools.

5. EscaVox – Australia

Focused on working to change food supply chains from what they used to be to what they should actually be, which allows for better decision making, decreases waste and increases food safety. It makes use of a software designed to import and connect several data sets, then examines and recognizes problem areas.

6. Aromyx – United States

It works on the creation of quantitative digital representations of taste and smell, by secluding natural human odorant receptors and transforming them to a systematizesd diagnostic format.

7. AgTrace – Brazil

This Brazil start-up has come up with a solution that is traceable and ensures transparency and decreases the response time to matters within the food value chain. They deliver information security about all things agriculture that everyone can bank on.

8. Agrospheres – United States

This company has developed biological-based crop safeguarding products for the control of thrips and fungi. They also have partners they are collaborating with to enhance the delivery and effectiveness of pesticides.