French start-up sencrop announced on Tuesday that it had raised $18 million in round B financing, which was led by JVP. The company helps farmers mitigate risks, from extreme weather events to diseases affecting a variety of crops It is both hardware and software. It has a prediction service that you can get by subscribing to products.
Weather forecasting is a complex industry because it requires a lot of data to create an accurate prediction model. That's why sencrop took inspiration from netatmo or waze and bet on crowdsourcing to improve its services.
Sencrop customers can purchase their own connection stations to measure temperature, humidity, rainfall, wind speed and sunlight. These weather stations contribute to sencrop's real-time data. And it works well because the company has sold more than 20000 weather stations. In France, there is a weather station every 20 square kilometers on average. The company operates in 20 countries and has offices in France, the Netherlands, the UK, Germany, Spain and Italy.
Customers can see the current weather conditions and export historical data. But they can also move on the map, set alerts, and choose from a variety of prediction models to prepare for the next few days and predict agronomic risks. Sencrop can also help users when it comes to water pressure and irrigation management. The company offers multiple subscription levels to give users more functionality.
Sencrop also provides multiple integrations with decision support tools such as rimpro, vitimeteo, fruitweb, 360 Viti, and idropolan. This indicator oriented approach to fruit, grain or vine cultivation should lead to better productivity and bottom line improvement.
In addition to JVP, other investors in sencrop's round B financing include EIT food, stellar impact, IRD management and some existing shareholders of the company, such as bpifrance, Demeter IM and NCI waterstart.
"Sencrop's mission is to democratize precision agriculture and reduce crop risks for farmers," Martin ducroquet, co-founder and general manager of sencrop, said in a statement. "We have developed a unique microclimate technology that today enables more than 20000 professionals - farmers, grape growers, fruit growers, etc. - to obtain ultra precise and ultra localized information to better monitor their crops and risks on their plots every day."
Next, the company hopes to accelerate its international expansion, starting with the North American market.