Molten Ventures is pleased to have led the seed investment round in British agtech company, Gardin. Also participating in the round is LDV Capital, MMC Ventures and Seedcamp. The announcement follows a $1.2 million pre-seed round in January 2021. Gardin was first introduced to Molten through our Fund of Funds seed programme.
Launched in 2020, Gardin, is on a mission to make nutritious food production sustainable and affordable, for consumers and for the planet. To achieve this, it has developed optical sensors to obtain data at the individual plant level, allowing growers to monitor biochemical processes such as photosynthesis in real time. Using data from these sensors, Gardin’s machine learning algorithms deliver actionable, real-time insights that enable crop growers to optimise yield, improve unit economics, and sell products high in nutrition. By building up a large unique dataset around crop health and nutrition, Gardin’s long term vision is to become the go-to data marketplace in the global food supply chain.
The company plans to use this injection of capital to fuel their growth in Europe and North America, as well as scale its penetration in greenhouses and vertical farms. Gardin also plans to improve their sensors and to release new advanced analytics features such as crop forecasting and nutritional density mapping.
Edel Coen, investor, Molten Ventures said:
“The global food and agriculture system is coming to a tipping point. There are more people, more waste and less land available than ever before: food security and sustainable food production are now enormous challenges we are experiencing at a global scale. Gardin’s unique technology enables a step change in how and where food can be produced. We are excited to partner with Sumanta and the Gardin team on the journey toward solving one of the most significant challenges of our time.”
Dr Sumanta Talukdar, founder and CEO of Gardin said:
“At Gardin, we set out on a mission to develop cutting edge enabling technology for the future of food sustainability. Today’s announcement of Molten Ventures as the lead investor of our seed round marks an important step on that journey. We always put a huge emphasis on focused partnerships who share our ambition and we found exactly that when we met the team at Molten.
“With the technology that is becoming available, food can be better, it can be tastier, it can be more secure. What’s more, the systems that provide it, if managed sustainably, can contribute to the health of our planet rather than advance its decline. We are incredibly excited to be a part of that movement and look forward to continue learning about and improving the way we grow our food.”