TeleSense, an Internet of Things (IoT) technology innovator providing solutions to improve food safety and grain storage, announces it has closed a $6.5 million Series A round of financing led by Ag investment pioneer Finistere Ventures. Congruent Ventures, Maersk Growth, Rabobank’s Food & Agri Innovation Fund, Radicle Growth and Trailhead Capital, as well as previous investor Plug and Play Ventures, have also joined the round.
“Spoilage is an age-old problem plaguing the food and grain industry, and we believe that the time is ripe for the confluence of new technologies to be applied to this problem. TeleSense is the only company we’ve found that has the insight and all the necessary elements to effectively tackle this multi-billion dollar issue,” noted Spencer Maughan, co-founder and partner, Finistere Ventures. “We invest in visionaries helping to create a more sustainable global food supply chain. TeleSense’s data-driven approach will help redefine expectations for how grain is stored, handled and traded in the years to come.”
In the connected era of IoT, supply chain decisions related to consumables will inevitably be increasingly based on data. TeleSense plans to use this additional investment to bring its data-driven solutions to the global agricultural supply chain, with an initial focus on grain storage and transport solutions in order to improve profitability and reduce waste.
The company will invest in R&D for the further development of its GrainSafe™ artificial intelligence (AI) platform, while building an international channel partner program that reaches both the developed and developing economies.
In the developed world alone, $12B of grain is lost due to spoilage annually. Working with a number of billion-dollar, global grain storage companies and co-ops, TeleSense has shown that its continuous monitoring IoT solution and cloud platform can help alleviate losses through rapid detection of anomalies and automatic notifications.
To date, TeleSense has helped save grain valued at up to $3 million, stored under the management of its customers. Grain elevator, trading, and storage companies whose businesses are to service thousands of farmers and growers worldwide provide a huge opportunity for TeleSense’s technology.
TeleSense GrainSafe™ gives grain storage operators the first scalable data platform that powers a useful enterprise analytics product suite. By continuously monitoring temperature and humidity,
TeleSense customers can immediately alleviate spoilage, reduce quality degradation and increase profits. TeleSense uses innovative portable and fixed wireless sensors to collect more comprehensive data, and deliver an extensive suite of enterprise solutions, extending the insight currently available in the industry. This will not only provide a step-up in sophistication compared to what is available today in well-developed economies, but these solutions will also enable improvements for grain stored in ground piles and bags, commonly used in less developed economies.
“We have seen that the recent case of bumper crops have resulted in surplus grain, causing storage complexities around the globe," says TeleSense Co-Founder and CEO Naeem Zafar. "Being able to safely store grain for longer periods of time, and having insight into what will happen to it in the future, will allow farmers and traders more choices about if and when to sell. Intelligent, data-driven decisions will help decrease the pressure of seasonal pricing fluctuations, global trade and tariff concerns, and currency issues.
"We want storage operators to have a clear view of the condition of all their stored grain," he adds. "So potential issues can be detected and any negative business impact mitigated.”
