Crowdfunding venture capital fund OurCrowd has announced the Israeli launch of Radicle, an accelerator fund dedicated to growing early stage agricultural technology startups into proven industry leaders. The fund is launched in partnership with Finistere Ventures, Cloud Break Advisors, and an alliance of top agricultural industry leaders, including Bayer and DuPont. Radicle aims to reduce the time to develop, market, and commercialize new agriculture technologies.
With a focus on global AgTech solutions, Radicle will offer a specialized platform to incubate high-quality AgTech companies that can solve global farming problems. Radicle focuses on the areas where growers face the greatest challenges to productivity, sustainability, and quality in food and agriculture. These include technology fields like genomics and plant sciences, seed tech, biologicals for crop protection and regulation, digital (application of data and predictive analytics to precision agriculture), and disruptive or novel farm systems.
OurCrowd will be working closely with its Radicle partners to promote investment opportunities in Israel, sourcing high quality startups with strong growth potential. OurCrowd was a natural partner for the Radicle consortium due to its excellent track record investing in and growing Israeli agricultural companies. Companies in the OurCrowd portfolio include EdenShield, a non-toxic chemical application that protects crops from pest damage, and CropX, a software-driven smart irrigation system, where OurCrowd and Finistere Ventures are both investors.
Radicle will be a $15 million fund with $6 million in initial closing commitments.
Radicle maintains a physical presence in all core markets, including Israel, San Diego, Palo Alto, Research Triangle Park and the Midwest USA.
OurCrowd general partner David Stark said, “We are excited to work with our partners at Radicle to discover, invest, and grow the next wave of AgTech innovation from Israel and around the world and bring to market solutions that address the greatest challenges that will face farmers over the next half century and beyond.”
"DuPont Pioneer continually scouts the innovation frontier for novel ways to improve agricultural productivity and seeks to collaborate with those on the cutting edge of science, even at the earliest stages of technology development," said Neal Gutterson, Vice President, Research & Development, DuPont Pioneer. "Radicle's virtual accelerator operating model and investing approach is expected to help Pioneer achieve these objectives."
"Investing in the Radicle accelerator fits perfectly with Bayer's global investment strategy," added Geoff Kneen, R&D Licensing & New Ventures Manager for North America, Bayer. "It complements our VC partnership with Finistere, which can support earlier stage ventures in the United States with a global pipeline. The deep AgTech knowledge and experience of the management team and investor partners will be able to provide strong guidance to the startup companies."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on June 29, 2016
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