iFarm, a startup offering innovative solutions for growing fresh greens, berries and vegetables, raised $4M in funding round led by Gagarin Capital. Other investors include Matrix Capital, Impulse VC, IMI.VC and several business angels. iFarm has 11 industrial farms operating and under construction in Finland, Switzerland, UK, Netherlands, Andorra, Russia and Kazakhstan with a total planting area of more than 11.000 m². iFarm was the best agricultural startup in Europe in The Europas Awards 2020.
iFarm’s automated vertical farm management technologies allow customers to start growing salads, greens, berries and vegetables in the urban environment: from empty warehouses and factory shops to basements and distribution centers. The technology is based on an adaptive protocol that includes computer vision, machine learning, the data about thousands of plants collected from a distributed network of farms as well as the industry knowledge.
“Investors can participate in the worldwide network of vertical farms and receive a rate of return well above bank deposit rates. We already have a group of financial partners involved in the development of our farms, and now there is a direct opportunity for this type of investment in Finland, UK, Switzerland, Netherlands, Russia and UAE.”
Alex Lyskovsky, co-founder and President of iFarm
The iFarm Growtune platform can determine the plant’s weight, any growth deviations or pathologies and build a system that improves crops’ quality characteristics on its own. It provides recommendations to the farm staff and adjusts the microclimate settings to ensure better results.
“iFarm enables environmentally friendly production with zero carbon footprint delivery due to much shorter transportation time, does not deplete the Earth’s soil resources, and saves water needed for the plants. We plan to operate 1M m² of vertical farms using iFarm technology around the world and provide technology to grow 500+ crops by 2026.”
Max Chizhov, co-founder and CEO of iFarm
The company will use the funding to develop its iFarm Growtune tech platform that enables operations of multiple varieties of vertical farms and quadrupling the number of plants available to iFarm’s tech. In addition, iFarm will be optimizing its automated production lines to reduce labor costs and complete experiments with growing strawberries, cherry tomatoes, sweet peppers, radish and other crops.
About iFarm
iFarm is a team of enthusiastic entrepreneurs developing solutions for modern urban farming. It creates technologies that enable anyone to grow fresh vegetables, berries, greens and edible flowers for personal use or commercial purposes. It offers fully automated sustainable, eco-friendly and economically viable turnkey solutions suitable for production sites of any size.
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