Kalaari Capital-backed Indian agritech startup nets $21m in series A round

AgNext Technologies, an India-based agritech startup, has raised US$21 million in a series A round led by Alpha Wave Incubation fund, which is backed by venture capital platform DisruptAD and managed by Falcon Edge Capital.

Photo credit: Sompong Sriphet / 123rf

The round also saw participation from existing investors Omnivore and Kalaari Capital.

According to AgNext, the round delivered an exit to agribusiness incubator a-IDEA, which initially invested in the firm in 2017. Managed by the National Academy of Agricultural Research Management, a-IDEA received 5x its initial investment in the startup.

Founded in 2016, AgNext provides deep-tech solutions for food quality assessment, monitoring, and management. Its platform aims to solve quality-related issues in the post-harvest agriculture value chain. Over the last four years, AgNext has collected more than 2 million food samples across several categories to build large artificial intelligence datasets, it said in a statement.

The company counts ITC, Godrej, and the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India as some of its top clients.

The fresh funds will go into investments in newer commodities, improving the startup’s presence across India, and expanding its operations to the Middle East, Europe, and South Asia. AgNext also aims to improve its tech platform Qualix, which uses a combination of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the internet of things to provide swift food quality assessment.