FarmTrace, an agtech firm that offers farmers a cloud-based management system, has announced that Secha Capital and Hassium Capital have contributed to its most recent fundraising round, the details of which remain confidential.
The newly established business claims that the equity investment, which follows a seed round of one million dollars, would be put towards the expansion of the company and the enhancement of the quality of service it provides to its clients.
FarmTrace takes great satisfaction in being the industry’s leading cloud-based farm management solution. It provides farmers with a wide variety of tools that can assist them in scaling and managing their operations.
Its platform integrates production processes in a way that enables remote oversight of farm operations, which is a very useful feature. FarmTrace asserts that its solutions may improve the efficiency of farms, which will in turn lead to an increase in yield.
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FarmTrace Funding so far
FarmTrace was established in 2015 by two partners named Jacques du Plessis and Werner Lategan. For the first three years of its operation, the company relied solely on its own resources to remain relevant before receiving a $1 million investment in 2018.
“With this capital, FarmTrace will bring about the next wave of farming cost savings, yield and efficiency improvements.” Lategan, who serves as the COO of the firm, said this in reference to the latest raise that was completed.
To ensure that we are able to assist farms in growing sustainably and successfully, we will expand the number of farms, products, and geographic areas that we serve.
Brendan Mullen, managing director of Secha Capital, expressed confidence in FarmTrace’s business model and maintained that the solution was designed to address the primary challenges faced by farmers. “We’ve met with many agritech companies that treated agriculture as a homogenous sector and were not built with the farmer in mind.”
He explained that the FarmTrace team is aware of the most problematic aspects of farming operations and has devised a solution to address these issues.
The managing director of Hassium Capital, Howard Saffy, gushed about the FarmTrace team as well. “The team has done an amazing job in building a highly satisfied client base across a variety of horticulture crops,” he said.
“They have worked hand-in-hand with farmers to develop solutions to meet their exact needs. We are excited to be able to support them on the journey and look forward to being part of the growth here in South Africa and beyond.”
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The Impact of FarmTrace Investments
FarmTrace claims that the investment would make it easier for them to scale their goods and give farmers the opportunity to enhance their operations in a profitable way.
This will further stimulate growth in Africa’s agricultural sector by giving employment opportunities locally, lowering the amount of food that is wasted, and improving the efficiency of farm operations.
FarmTrace operates in a sector of the market that is in desperate need of regulatory oversight. The food market in Africa is still seeing an increase in food costs, which is the result of disruptions in supply, the high cost of farm inputs, and volatility in currency exchange rates.
In spite of predictions that the market will be worth one trillion dollars by the end of this decade, the majority of farms in Africa are run by untrained smallholder farmers that engage in sub-optimal farming practices and produce a significant amount of wasted food.
The use of a tech-powered management system such as that offered by FarmTrace could give a much-needed benefit to agricultural enterprises located in Africa.