There are now more than 400 Israel agritech startups working on innovations for the global agriculture sector, according to new research from Start-Up Nation Central, an Israeli NGO and Greensoil Investments, a local agritech venture capital firm.
As reported in AgFunder News:
For a young nation built on the collectivist agricultural ethos of the Kibbutz movement, it’s perhaps no surprise that Israel’s agricultural technology startup ecosystem is booming.
These agritech startups are innovating across a range of challenges such as drought and water efficiency, as well as crop productivity and waste.
While Israel’s agritech funding footprint might look relatively small compared to other leading markets such as the US — according to AgFunder, Israeli agritech startups raised just 2% of funding dollars in 2016 ($51.7m), accounting for 3.3% of deal-flow (19 deals) in 2016, while US startups raised 58% of funding dollars and 48% of deal-flow — this is still impressive with a population of 8.5 million next to the US’s 323 million.
Israel is undoubtedly an innovation hub, and there are many serial entrepreneurs moving into agritech bringing experience, tech, methodologies, and connections from other sectors into the agritech vertical.
Israeli agritech is also growing in terms of incoming investments. Since the beginning of 2017, there have been many large investments such as Prospera’s $15 million Series B financing, Taranis’ $7.5 million Series A, a strategic $15 million investment in Hinoman, and others.
Along with Greensoil Investments, Start-Up Nation Central has used the Start-Up Nation Finder platform to build a taxonomy that identifies different sub categories in agritech. This has been visualized in an Israeli agritech market map along with a representative, and non-exhaustive, selection of companies in each category.
To read more about companies in each category, click here.
To download a free copy of Start Up Nation Central’s Israel Agritech market map, click here.
Israel Trade and Economic Commission in Sydney, Australia 