“Food is climate; Food is health”: revealing our fourth cohort of the AgFunder GROW Impact Accelerator

• 10 international agrifoodtech startups are the newest addition to the growing portfolio of the AgFunder GROW Impact Accelerator.
• Now in its fourth year, the programme backed by leading agrifoodtech VC, AgFunder drives sustainability & resilience in our global food system by supercharging startups that create positive impact for people, place, and planet.
• This year’s application pool was the largest yet, with 600 eager founders from 82 countries submitting entries for a coveted spot in this annual programme that is garnering international attention.
• 2023’s investment is directed at impactful verticals including food as medicine, climate-smart agriculture; food system decarbonization; agri-fintech for financial inclusion of farmers; and human and animal health.

SINGAPORE, 4 May 2023 – GROW, the agrifoodtech ecosystem catalyst, has unveiled the latest cohort for the fourth annual AgFunder GROW Impact Accelerator. The handpicked cohort reflects the increasingly crucial interconnections between food, improved human and animal health, smallholder financial inclusion, and climate.

These 10 selected startups, who were picked from a competitive applicant pool of over 600 applications hailing from 82 countries, offer novel solutions within synthetic biology, food as medicine, food waste valorization and stronger carbon management systems, to solving the “holy grail” of financial inclusion for smallholder farmers. Half of the startups are led by women founders and leadership. 

The startups selected are:

• AgriFi (India): Digital credit platform increasing financial inclusion for smallholder farmers and reducing lending risk for institutions.
• Amatera (France): Accelerating the breeding of climate resilient perennial crops, starting with coffee and woody crops.
• CarbonFarm (France): Providing satellite-verified carbon credits to help rice farmers accurately quantify their emissions and fund their transition to sustainable practices.
• DHF Platforms (Vietnam): Smallholder-driven fresh produce platform delivering traceability, transparency and tech-optimised logistics to reduce waste.
• Exosomm (Israel): Improving health with a novel bioactive food ingredient containing natural miRNA, milk exosomes.
• FaunaTech (India): Novel smartphone-based diagnostics platform for rapid testing of milk and bovine health at the farmgate.
• IIF (Australia): A platform enabling everyday folks to invest into agriculture without owning a farm.
• The Kawa Project (US): Upcycling coffee waste to create valuable, less-toxic cocoa powder alternatives.
• NTP Technologies (US): Enabling on-site, salt-free, sustainable and organic nitrogen fertiliser production. 
• OlsAro (Sweden): Developing salt-tolerant crops using AI-enabled trait discovery. 

The Impact Accelerator programme is backed by AgFunder’s GROW Impact Fund – the first to invest in companies based on the potential environmental and social impact they can bring, going beyond just commercial metrics. The Fund measures and reports to its Limited Partners on the startups’ impact performance, on an individual company level as well as overall portfolio performance. 

Each company receives US$100,000 in cash as well as the opportunity to collaborate with and raise additional investment through AgFunder’s global network of co-investment partners, including a number of prominent global agrifood corporations. 

Over the course of 20 weeks, the 10 selected startups will receive support from the GROW Accelerator to scale rapidly and advance sustainability. The programme culminates in a Demo Day in November 2023 to coincide with the Singapore International Agrifood Week (SIAW).

Following the difficult task in choosing 10 startups from the many high quality applicants, Michael Dean, Founding Partner of AgFunder observed, “When we launched the GROW Impact Fund, the vision was to attract the smartest, most innovative entrepreneurs with a passion for revolutionizing the food system to improve the lives of the most vulnerable people on the planet. I am delighted to say we have again achieved this goal. With climate change beginning to materially impact crop production, animal health and productivity, fisheries and water availability, particularly in emerging markets, we have no time to waste in accelerating these potentially transformative technologies.” 

Learn more about the AgFunder GROW Impact Accelerator by visiting http://www.gogrow.co/the-grow-accelerator .