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Start-up alumni FA Bio and Agreena share their progress since their initial pitch at World Agri-Tech, how they’ve navigated business growth in today’s challenging fundraising environment, and the lessons they’ve gathered along the way.
Tell us about your journey as an early-stage start-up, up to your funding success last year.
Simon Haldrup, CEO, AGREENA: “Back in 2018, my co-founders and I started Agreena as a marketplace for grains. We pivoted the company into what we are now with one simple goal: the more farmers and hectares we transition to regenerative agriculture, the more carbon dioxide is sequestered. We saw an opportunity to synthesise our company strengths as visionary farmers and fintech savvies to come up with a set of solutions that will revolutionise the sector.
Agreena unlocks the power of soil carbon removals and natural capital to finance the transition to regenerative agriculture, working in close collaboration with partner farmers across 19 European countries, and growing globally. In March ’23, we raised €46m in Series B funding to further scale the regenerative revolution, supporting continued expansion of global carbon farming initiatives and new fintech solutions.”
Looking back at the activity the past few years, both regarding market dynamics and your company’s internal development, have there been any pivotal “aha” moments that shaped your strategy? Conversely, what have been the friction points you have encountered?
Simon Haldrup: “The challenge at the start of our journey remains the biggest challenge today: mobilising farmers to adopt new practices and technologies. An early ‘aha’ moment was understanding that our mission had to be farmer-centric, because farmers are doing all the heavy lifting. That inspired us to use our technology to make it as easy as possible for farmers to adopt regenerative practices and earn money to do so. We know that agriculture is highly fragmented, with low operating margins, and farmers have a lot on their plate. We had to find a way to provide additional revenue streams for large farms looking to make a positive business case, while at the same time assuage the liquidity and investment challenge medium and smaller farms face when transitioning to regenerative farming.
Carbon credits work well for both scenarios, but there are other potential revenue-generating solutions for regenerative farmers as well. We leverage our science-backed, verified farm-level data to support companies decarbonise their supply chains – all while helping push forward the regenerative agenda.”
What are the main obstacles and challenges you anticipate as you move forward with your start-up? How do you plan to address and overcome them?
Simon Haldrup: “After Agreena raised its Series A funding, our big growth markets were large farmers in Ukraine and Russia. That was 30 days before the war broke out and we had to change our entire market strategy more or less overnight. That adaptability is deeply embedded in our company culture, because we’re still operating in a very blue ocean market where the rules are changing all the time. Being able to adapt as a company, and bringing farmers along on that journey, is super important.”
What insights and strategies can you share for successfully raising funds, especially during these challenging times or in highly competitive environments?
Simon Haldrup: “Agtech is very often also climate tech, and climate tech is by far one of the most promising categories out there. If we can overcome the adoption barrier for farmers, then we’re looking at gigantic markets, which resonates with climate financing.”
How are you engaging with corporates and other partners, what support have you found invaluable?
Simon Haldrup: “It’s crucial now more than ever for the entire ecosystem to come together to advance the sustainability agenda, while creating stacked value and incentives for farmers.
Agreena has achieved many significant corporate partnerships and is working together with major in the agri-food chain and other sectors to bridge the gap between regenerative farmers and organisations that wish to support sustainability in agriculture. We recently signed a MoU with UAE agribusiness Al Dahra to announced the first of our partnership projects together: transitioning the largest consolidated arable farm in the EU to regenerative agriculture. We also played a key role in establishing the International Soil Carbon Industry Alliance (ISCIA). ISCIA is an alliance of 15 companies that are coming together to advance climate change mitigation through soil carbon sequestration. It’s an exciting development that demonstrates the growing role of soil carbon in the carbon removal toolkit. Our recent banking partnership reflects the growing importance of the finance sector in driving the regenerative transition and we expect to announce many more innovative partnerships in the future.”
Tell us about your journey as an early-stage start-up, up to your recent funding success
Angela de Manzanos, CEO & Co-Founder, FA BIO: Since pitching at the 2021 World Agri-Tech Summit, FA Bio has grown significantly, achieving key milestones and building our product pipeline. Following the successful development and commercialisation of our soil microbial analysis tool SporSenZ, in 2021 we pivoted our mission from offering diagnosis tools to developing sustainable microbial bioproducts.
We’ve continued our focus on facilitating a step-change in regenerative agriculture with the identification of superior microbes and the development of our unique microbial library, which now contains over 2,600 microbes, all with promising activities. We continue to scale up our discovery projects from the lab to the fields with strong results and promising data, showing our microbes have the activity and impact our partners are looking for.
Having successfully closed our latest fundraise in January 2024, we are excited to accelerate our R&D work, this latest investment highlights the growing financial commitment to the Agritech sector, and we continue to assess opportunities for further growth to drive FA BIO forward.
Looking back at the activity the past few years, both regarding market dynamics and your company’s internal development, have there been any pivotal “aha” moments that shaped your strategy? Conversely, what have been the friction points you have encountered?
Angela de Manzanos: We founded our business after attending several conferences and meetings with key agricultural industry stakeholders, understanding that one of the biggest challenges faced in agriculture was the appearance of pathogens in soils that were resistant to fungicides. That’s when we developed the SporSenZ tool, to help alert growers about the presence of fungal disease in their soil and understand better the health of their soils to guide them in their fungicide applications.
However, when we began testing the SporSenZ with growers, we found there was a requirement to have access to efficient and robust biological controls for crop pests. Growers were spending a lot of money on crop protection techniques that weren’t working, so we evolved our business strategy to use our unique technology to discover sustainable solutions for growers.
As a female founder in the agriculture industry, I’ve been exposed to stereotypes and discrimination. The minority representation of female leaders in the Agritech ecosystem creates an unconscious bias that can lead to a lack of trust or scepticism in women’s abilities compared with those of others. We need to break the bias and advocate for equality and fair treatment from key industry stakeholders to mitigate the impact of gender bias on the success of future innovation.
What are the main obstacles and challenges you anticipate as you move forward with your start-up? How do you plan to address and overcome them?
Angela de Manzanos: Regulation is a huge obstacle for many businesses in the agriculture industry as it poses significant hurdles for the adoption of innovation. For a company involved in the discovery of biological products, the complex and lengthy approval processes in some geographies, as well as high compliance costs, can stifle innovation and delay the introduction of beneficial technologies to the market. To overcome these hurdles, there is a need for collaboration between regulators, innovators, and stakeholders to help create a more conducive environment for the adoption of new agricultural technologies.
Field trials are also challenging in a start-up environment; besides the cost implications you are often restricted to the times of year that you can conduct them according to the crop seasons. At FA Bio, we have a team who plan and prepare each element of our field trials for months before they are conducted to ensure we can take advantage of the crop cycle windows every time they occur and obtain the best possible results to advance our research and discovery of superior microbes.
What insights and strategies can you share for successfully raising funds, especially during these challenging times or in highly competitive environments?
Angela de Manzanos: As a female entrepreneur in agriculture balancing starting a family with growing a business, it has been important to put in place a supportive network of shareholders and a team that facilitates effective task delegation to achieve our goals. If you acknowledge the needs and requirements of your industry and you are honest about how and why you want to provide solutions, you will find partners who are willing to support you through every stage of your journey.
Having closed our second fundraise in January 2024, we continue assessing opportunities for growth and meeting with potential future investors as its imperative to put time, effort and consideration into building these relationships for them to be successful for both the company and the investors.
How are you engaging with corporates and other partners, what support have you found invaluable?
Angela de Manzanos: We are actively strengthening our relationships with current partners whilst also exploring new opportunities and partnerships.
We prioritise attending key industry events like the World-Agri Tech Summit which not only provide valuable insights to the current opportunities and challenges in the agriculture industry but also provide an opportunity to network with partners and investors who are aligned in our company mission.
The World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit in London has been connecting innovators with like-minded businesses and investors for over ten years, and these are just two of many success stories to emerge from the event. Take the first step in your commercialization journey by participating in the Start-Up arena in London this September 30 – October 3.