Roehl Niño Bautista · · 1 min readDrone startup raises $4.3m in Malaysia’s largest seed round
Drone tech firm Poladrone has raised Malaysia’s largest seed funding so far, bagging US$4.3 million in a Wavemaker Partners-led round joined by Malaysian Technology Development Corporation, ZB Capital, and other angel investors.
Prior to this, the largest seed round in Malaysia was AppShack’s US$4 million raise in 2016, according to Tech in Asia‘s data.
Poladrone founder and CEO Jin Xi Cheong / Photo credit: Poladrone
Poladrone provides all-in-one drone services across multiple industries. In 2020, it launched its precision spot spraying drone, automating frequent pesticide spraying operations for oil palm plantations. It also has a blanket-spraying agriculture drone for open field crops like corn and banana.
See also: He grew up around oil palm plantations. Now he’s using drones to make them more efficient
The startup grew its workforce by 4x in the past year, and it intends to scale its operations and recruitment with the fresh funds. It’s also building service centers in agricultural towns in Malaysia and Thailand, with plans of entering Indonesia soon.
“Many of our customers rely on drones to earn a living, and downtime is detrimental to their livelihood. As most operations happen away from metropolitan areas, our service centers will provide better accessibility to customers to quickly maintain or repair their equipment,” said Jin Xi Cheong, founder and CEO of Poladrone.
Editing by Miguel Cordon and Lorenzo Kyle Subido
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