What's the best path for an AgTech startup, the path that will allow the startup to benefit the most by:
- raising sufficient or maximum fund,
- accessing the best specialized scientific and technical assistance in the agriculture sector,
- connecting with the most suitable investors,
- connecting with the right or best marketing and sales networks,
- connecting with the right customers,
- finding the right government or private sector partner,
- recruiting the best candidates to build your team.
Do this path exist? Where can an agtech startup find all this? And what does it take to access all this privileges? This post is an attempt to define this ideal path, certainly for leading start-ups working on innovative food and agricultural technology.
The biggest prize $2M.
You need to know about the MILKEN-MOTSEPE PRIZE IN AGRITECH, the prize is looking for a startup with an innovative solutions that will increase economic value for small an medium-sized farms in Africa.
You will probably need to develop a solution to increase productivity or for the reduction of harvest loss in those crops for example:
- cassava
- maize
- sugar cane
- yams
The MILKEN-MOTSEPE PRIZE IN AGRITECH is a global competition, open to everyone and the innovation offered by the agtech startup can be between the beginning of harvest and when the product is sold at market.
It's probably not an annual competition, the organizer may choose other fields in the next years, it's now or never.
Locate in New York region.
If you want to locate in the New York state (not New York city), you should know about GROW-NY, a global competition open to any country in the world with $1M equity grand prize. The competition require the winner to locate for at least 12 months in New York state's finger lakes, central NY and southern tier regions.
GROW-NY is an annual prize awards co-organized with Cornell university. actually covering food, fuels, fibers, raw materials and like The MILKEN-MOTSEPE PRIZE IN AGRITECH it also rewards processes or systems that improve the development, growth, production, distribution, delivery or processing. One of the competition judging criteria is the relevance to the existing food and ag ecosystem, this mean that you are highly likely to be accepted in grow-ny if you start-up is for maize (corn) and you will probably not be accepted if your start-up is about cassava or yams.
The digital agtech.
gener8tor is a big network of multi-field accelerators, their program named GENER8TOR AGTECH is part of the Illinois agtech accelerator, the GENER8TOR AGTECH winner prize is a cash investment of $100,000 and an additional $1M in deals and perks.
The fact that the perks are from vendors like IBM cloud, Rackspace, Amazon, PayPal, Zendesk and Microsoft, indicate the accelerator is looking for digital agtech startups developing application for the agriculture sector.
The american farm bureau federation competition.
it's not an accelerator, it's the farmers federation organizing a competition named AG INNOVATION CHALLENGE that awards a $50,000 cash prize to one of it's member. They are looking for solution to problems like:
- access to labor,
- optimizing yield
- And like The MILKEN-MOTSEPE PRIZE IN AGRITECH, they also seek to reduce operating costs.
Get exposure and potential customers.
Funding is not the only think that an early-stage startup need, what founders may need most is to build a sales pipeline with enough good leads to reduce the time needed to close deals.
FOODBYTES is one of those global competition where there's no money prize to win, instead you will get good exposure and the chance to meet potential customers or partners in the agriculture and food sectors.
Expand into Asia.
If you want to grow your business, expanding your activity to other continents is one way to do it, The GROW IMPACT ACCELERATOR is the right one to expand into Asia, it's a global agrifoodtech accelerator located in Singapore.
Teams accepted into the GROW impact accelerator receives $100k investment and $100k in kind, GROW has 7 areas of interest:
- novel foods and ingredients,
- supply chain rationalization,
- climate-smart food production,
- circular economy,
- food waste valorization,
- personalized nutrition & health
And like The MILKEN-MOTSEPE PRIZE IN AGRITECH, they also seek to advance smallholder farmers.
Access labs, trial sites and experts.
Before searching for funding and customers, you need to develop your technology solution. If you have an engineering agtech startup, you probably need a lot of testing and development some in laboratory and other on site, you will need a trial farm. SPARKLABS CULTIV8 accelerator is offering that, it a global accelerator that reward successful applicants cash investment worth up to AUD $100,000.
Conclusion
We think that the successful candidate that could probably win all those competition is an agtech startup that have a solutions for corn (maize) farming, developing a technology that increase economic value for small an medium-sized farms.
Deadlines
- 20 August 2021 Ag innovation challenge that awards a $50k cash prize
- December 2021 MILKEN-MOTSEPE PRIZE IN AGRITECH, $2M
- April 2022 GENER8TOR AGTECH, $100k and an aditional $1M in deals and perks.
- July 2022 GROW-NY, $1M
- Waitlist The GROW impact accelerator, $100k investment and $100k in kind
- Waitlist Sparklabs cultiv8 accelerator, AUD $100,000.
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