Top Ag Financiers Invest in AI-Platform to Avoid Grain Spoilage During Storage and Transport
Sunnyvale, CA — AUGUST 28, 2018 — TeleSense, an IoT technology innovator providing innovative solutions to improve food safety and grain storage, today announced it has closed a $6.5 million Series A round of financing led by Ag investment pioneer Finistere Ventures. Congruent Ventures, Maersk Growth, Rabobank’s Food & Agri Innovation Fund, Radicle Growth and Trailhead Capital, as well as previous investor Plug and Play Ventures also joined the round.
“Spoilage during storage and transit is an age-old problem plaguing the food and grain industry; TeleSense is the only company we’ve found that has all the needed elements to effectively tackle this multi-billion dollar issue,” noted Spencer Maughan, partner, Finistere Ventures. “We invest in visionaries creating a more sustainable global food supply chain, and TeleSense’s data-driven approach will reinvent grain storage and transport standards in the years to come.”
In the connected era of the Internet of things (IoT), food supply chain decisions should be increasingly based on data. TeleSense plans to use this additional investment to bring its solutions to the global agricultural supply chain, with an initial focus on grain storage and transport solutions in order to improve profitability and reduce waste. The company will invest in R&D for the further development of its artificial intelligence (AI) platforms, while building an international channel partner program that reaches both the developed and developing world.
In the developed world alone, $12B of grain is lost due to spoilage annually. Working with a number of billion-dollar, global grain storage companies and co-ops, TeleSense has shown that its continuous monitoring IoT solution and cloud platform can help alleviate losses through rapid detection of anomalies and automatic notifications. To date, TeleSense has helped save grain valued at up to three million dollars stored under the management of our customers. Grain elevator, grain trading and grain storage companies whose business is to service thousands of farmers and growers worldwide provides a huge opportunity for TeleSense’s technology.
Traditional methods of grain storage data collection are manual and expensive; the TeleSense industrial IoT system makes that data collection simple and cost-effective. TeleSense GrainSafe™ gives grain storage operators an easy and effective way to continuously monitor temperature and humidity, alleviate spoilage, help ensure reduced quality degradation, and increase profits. Grainsafe offers a variety of data collection options, using gateways and sensor nodes to portable solutions, in order to view and model a more complete profile of current grain storage conditions. This provides a much superior solution than what is currently available for grain storage structures commonly used in developed economies, and especially when stored in ground piles and grain bags commonly used in less developed regions.
“We have seen with bumper crops that often result in surplus grain causing storage headaches around the globe, it is painfully clear that the grain industry needs to maximize the value of stored grain. Being able to safely store grain for longer periods of time allows more control over if and when to sell by decreasing the pressure from seasonal pricing fluctuations, global trade and tariff concerns, and currency issues,” added TeleSense Co-Founder and CEO Naeem Zafar. “We want storage operators to have a clear view of the real-time conditions of all stored grains so potential issues can be detected and mitigated before they impact grain quality.”
Finistere’s Maughan will join the TeleSense Board of Directors to help build out its partner network and actively support the company’s aggressive growth.
About TeleSense
TeleSense® provides Industrial IoT, real-time environmental monitoring solutions for grain and food production, storage, transport. We help manage environmental risks in the world’s food supply chain. We automate data collection and wirelessly upload and analyze it. Whether assets are at rest or in motion, using cloud-based technology, TeleSense enables enterprise the environmental conditions in real-time. Our solutions help eliminate human error, improve operational efficiency, the burden of regulatory compliance and profitability. For more information, please visit www.telesense.com.
About Finistere Ventures
Finistere Ventures is a leading global agricultural technology and life sciences venture capital investor with offices in Palo Alto, San Diego, Ireland and Israel. Its team has developed and invested in some of the most successful agtech companies of the last 20 years—building and backing companies worth more than $5 billion. Visit Finistere.com.
