Fledging agricultural IT company Agworld has won the backing of Bentley-based venture capital group Yuuwa, which has invested $1.5 million in the business that provides farms with an simple data capture service.
The move by Yuuwa is the second for the $40 million fund, which opened its doors late last year.
The money, which gives Yuuwa a 25 per cent stake in the start-up, will be used to accelerate Agworld’s expansion into Australian and offshore markets as well as fund research into other uses for its technology.
Agworld’s technology platform allows the efficient collection of data from the field using digital pens linked via mobile handsets and proprietary software to reference data hosted by a third party.
The model allows farmers to record data in the field, which is then directly accessible to users, such as consultants, who have permission to view it. Then digital pen is more robust than other computing options – such as personal digital assistants or laptops – which struggle to survive farm life in the paddocks. It also saves the farmer having to re-enter handwritten data into their computers.
Farmers and their consultants can search timely and targeted product information, manage and report on client data securely, access intelligent mapping and planning tools and even record voice conversations with clients to the system.
The technology is expected to have other applications, such as in mining or parks management.
Doug Fitch, a former executive with chemicals group Bayer, runs Agworld.
Mr Fitch said his fellow director Matthew Powell, who heads Agworld’s technology, brought the digital pen technology to him.
Mr Fitch said the group has spent around $1 million developing the technology and since going to market in December already had 500 growers with access to the system, mainly through about 100 farm consultants.
He believes the Agworld product would form a core from which other farm-based software would be able to feed from.
Mr Fitch said that farmers were doing a lot more data entry and other forms of information gathering to aid their decision-making. This was exacerbated for those involved growing genetically modified crops, which have significant regulatory requirements.
“I noticed how much paperwork has increased for the grower at his end and there was no way to manage that with IT,” he said.
Mr Fitch said that Yuuwa offered more than funding, with Agworld hoping to benefit from the venture capital group’s contacts and connections to help develop the business.
In April, Yuuwa announced the first investment from its fund, with up to $1.5 million committed to video analytic software that can monitor movement and train itself to identify unusual behaviour.
The software was developed at Curtin University of Technology’s Institute of Multi-sensor Processing and Content Analysis and will be commercialised via an entity called iCetana.
