By Lilian Schaer for Bioenterprise Canada
The path from idea to successful product on the market is not a straight or easy one for most entrepreneurs in the Canada’s agri-tech sector. It can be difficult to find support for unproven technologies, and unlike many other sectors, agriculture’s opportunities for product testing and trial opportunities are closely tied to the nature’s annual cycles, making for a longer and slower road to product validation and commercialization.
That’s where venture capital investor Verdex Capital decided to apply an innovative approach in creating a unique pathway for commercializing agri-tech: Carrot Ventures Fund I, L.P., more commonly known as Carrot Ventures.
Backed by Verdex Capital and Farm Credit Canada, Carrot is a $15 million venture fund that forms new companies around vetted, venture-scale technologies – in place of the more common approach of simply investing in existing businesses. This includes carefully selecting the leadership team to head each company and leading the first round of financing to ensure the new companies are properly launched.
“If you are an inventor of a technology and looking for co-founders to help you commercialize, or if your company has stranded agtech assets, we’re an alternative that can help you get value from your intellectual property,” says Martin Vetter, CEO of Verdex Capital and Founding Partner at Carrot Ventures. “We recognized there was a gap in the funding ecosystem, and Carrot Ventures is a new approach that’s based on an innovative company formation business model.”
Since its launch in 2021, Carrot has added two portfolio companies: Susterre Technologies, which uses ultra-high pressure fluid jet technology for planting crops without disturbing the soil through tillage, and Cellar Insights, a remote monitoring and intelligence platform for managing potato storage.
Susterre was originally founded by an Ontario company called I-Cubed Industry Innovators, which today remains a partner alongside Carrot and Susterre CEO Michael Cully. Its technology makes it easier for farmers to adopt environmentally friendly no-till and cover crop practices, which boost soil health while minimizing erosion.
These regenerative farming practices, however, can make it difficult for conventional planting equipment to cut through compacted soil and plant residue remaining on the field from the previous year’s crop to actually plant the corn, soybean and other seeds.
Since closing its first funding round in January 2022, Susterre has designed and delivered four commercial grade units which have been used for field testing, and successfully completed 20 different trials in Ontario and across five U.S. states.
“When we founded the company, we had one patent filed and now, as we’ve invented new improvements to the technology, we have three patent filings,” says Cully. “In 2024, we will be converting from pure testing to active commercialization and trying to sell units for delivery for the 2025 planting season with an initial focus on the U.S. corn belt.”
Source : Bioenterprises.ca