Yahoo Finance Agrotools farming for M&A with new $21M funding round
Agrotools, a Brazilian-based technology and intelligence company for agribusiness, raised $21 million (BRL 100 million) to value the company at around $94 million, according to the company.
Investors in the round include Horácio Lafer Piva (Klabin), Pedro Paulo Campos (JP Morgan, Pátria and Arsenal), Fátima Marques (Hay Group/Korn Ferry), Paulo Hegler (Toledo), Olivier Murguet (Nissan-Renault), KPTL and FIP Inovabra and Ronaldo Galvani Jr.
Agrotools provides remote analyses to agriculture customers for the management of operational risks and opportunities, focused on rural territories. That includes analyzing over 1,300 layers of data from multiple sources to provide information on what is happening with suppliers and customers across a certain rural territory to bring about competition and environmental, social and governance factors compliance. Its offerings include granting financial resources and rural insurance to the purchase of raw materials and sale of inputs, capital markets and retail.
Brazil’s agriculture sector is a $24 billion industry and Agrotools said it has analyzed over 4.5 million rural territories to date and monitors over $3 billion in commodities through its platform. It also boasts over $10 billion in rural finance portfolios supported by at least one of its offerings and approximately $20 billion in monitored agribusiness operations.
Sergio Rocha, CEO of Agrotools, said via email the company grew 16 times in the last six years, including tripling in size during the pandemic. The funding will be deployed into areas including expanding its business in the U.S., Latin America and other regions and technology development like artificial intelligence, blockchain, gamification, technology democratization and satellite data sources.
It will also be utilized for strategic partnerships and acquisitions. The company has already partnered with geospatial services company ESRI, said Rafael Gomes, COO of Agrotools.
“My dream, since the beginning of Agrotools, is to change global agribusiness, bringing to it efficiency and true sustainability,” Rocha said. “In short, we want to meet the Earth's needs to overcome the climate and food crises, using cutting-edge technology. Toward this vision, we just acquired a digital platform from Argentina to support the rural producer weather risk management and corporations risk assessment.”
