Sector: Agri-tech
Invested: January 2022
Co-investors:
Transforming the way the world grows food. Cropsy was founded in 2019 by Leila Deljkovic and Ali Alomari (later joined by co-founders Rory Buchanan and Winston Su) with a vision to transform fruit-growing for people and planet through ground-breaking technology.
Cropsy's purpose is to unlock the full potential of growers' land with insights that were impossible before. Their proprietary AI-enabled hardware allows growers to monitor every plant, understand the whole crop, and track how it changes over time. In a nutshell, this means to bring omniscience to fruit-growing.
Why Cropsy?
With the team’s focus on viticulture they’ve been able to build novel hardware that significantly improves their ability to visualise vines and software that identifies a number of growth factors. They also have strong development relationships within the wine sector.
Funds have enabled the team to grow, and are being utilised to continue R&D and technology development as well as to get the technology into the hands (more like onto the tractors!) of more users.
In considering an investment into Cropsy, a number of key factors we assessed:
- How does the technology and associated IP the team has developed to date, and plans to develop from the funds being invested, position them in comparison to both status quo operations and to competitor systems. What is this worth to users, and what difficulties exist in replicating it?
- Does the team have a strong understanding of and connections with their target customers and market?
- What motivates the founders?
Cropsy was able to give us a clear understanding on each of the above points, and we are excited to watch the progression of their journey.
PR on Cropsy:
- NZ Herald - February 2022: Viticulture innovation winner closes $1.5m in over subscribed capital raise
- Auckland NZ: New Frontiers in fruit growing
- Stuff NZ - June 2021: AI Tech Cropsy cultivates data to help wine growers make better decisions
- Business News Australia - April 2021: Q&A: How accelerator Startmate lifts startups with 'skin in the game' mentorship
- ISSUU magazine - Feb/March 2022, page 30: Bringing the power of A1 to vineyard monitoring
