Amsterdam-based scale-up 30MHz, a data platform for the agricultural sector that claims to connect people, plants, and technology, announced that it has secured €6.5M in the second round of funding.
The company had raised €3.5M in its Series A round of funding in early 2019 to focus on scale.
Capital utilisation
The company will use the newly raised capital to accelerate its technological developments and to achieve global climate and sustainability goals.
30MHz aims to further expand its role as a connector as well as the technology of the data platform. Timo Spruijt, CCO of 30MHz, says, “Our business model is aimed at enabling horticulture to achieve global climate and sustainability goals.”
For the farming sector, 30MHz built a platform that analyses data from in-field monitoring devices to help farmers remotely monitor and manage what happens in their fields. Recognising that most farms otherwise rely on low-tech tools like spreadsheets and messaging apps, 30MHz says it designed its platform to be simple and highly-customisable.
“Our focus is on facilitating a high-quality infrastructure and our strength lies in the reliability of the relevant data and its continuity. After all, our customers use our data to increase their yield at both crop and product level, reduce their losses, optimise irrigation, improve storage, prevent the risk of disease, and reduce their energy consumption,” Spruijt added.
Investors in this round
The round was led by Rubio Impact Ventures, which reports being impressed by how the plug-and-play platform makes complex data and knowledge accessible regardless of a grower’s existing systems or level of digitalisation.
Tijl Hoefnagels, Rubio’s venture partner for Food & Agri, explains, “The agronomic data that 30MHz offers growers worldwide in an accessible, affordable and remote manner, is indispensable to the accelerated digitisation of the agricultural sector. Particularly, the independence of the platform and the possibilities it affords growers for sharing their data with their own research partners, democratises outstanding knowledge that was not previously available to many growers worldwide. In a nutshell: 30MHz allows more growers to grow more with less.”
The round also saw participation from Participatiefonds Duurzame Economie Noord-Holland (PDENH), the Rabo Food & Agri Innovation Fund (RFAIF), SHIFT Invest II, and the Goeie Grutten Impact Fund.
PDENH’s director Bart Blokhuis says, “With a unique and scalable proposition, 30MHz is fully prepared to make not only a major commercial impact, but – at least as important – also an impact in the field of sustainability in the agri-food sector by facilitating the accessibility of as much data and as many insights to customers as possible.”
Effective, efficient, and sustainable cultivation
Founded in 2014 by Flavia Paganelli, Fleur van Vliet, Jasper Geurtsen, and Jurg van Vliet, 30MHz builds both hardware and software in collaboration with and for the benefit of the agricultural sector.
The company says, “Our aim is to connect every single stakeholder and facilitate their journey towards a more sustainable way of generating produce in the best possible data-driven way through a platform that has an unmatched capacity and flexibility.”
30MHz’s data platform provides growers, farmers, and horticulturists with insight into the climatic conditions of their crops. The platform interactively analyses information derived from various data sources such as climate computers, sensors, and manual input. By visualising the data and connecting farmers, growers, advisers, distributors, and researchers within the platform, the scale-up contributes to the more effective, efficient, and more sustainable cultivation of vegetables, plants, and seeds.
Currently, the company employs 35 people and serves more than 330 customers in 30 countries.
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