Fundraising

Farming app receives €2.1m in venture capital

Online farming platform trecker.com received funding from German venture capital firm Target Partners.

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Venture capital firm Target Partners has led a €2.1 million Series A round of funding for trecker.com, a German Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform for farmers and agricultural contractors.

The investment is the first agri-related investment by Target Partners and was made from its Fund II, which closed on €113 million in 2009. Investors in the fund include insurance company Bayerische Beamten Versicherung, and funds of funds RWB Private Capital Fonds, LGT Capital Partners and Morgan Stanley Alternative Investment Partners, according to Private Equity International.

Farmers and agricultural contractors use the trecker.com app to plan, record, monitor and invoice the deployment of machinery and manpower. It is currently being used by over 50 agricultural firms, according to a press release.

The number of technologies emerging that offer farmers access to data about their farming operations is growing. The appeal for farmers is the ability to use all inputs, such as fertilisers and water, to their greatest potential in what is known as precision agriculture. Last week US venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers invested into Farmers Edge, a precision agriculture and independent data management solutions company. And in August OpenAir Equity Partners, a venture capital fund, led a $40 million round of funding for FarmLink, an agtech company developing a yield benchmarking service for farmers.

“For years, the agricultural industry has been undergoing a technological revolution,” said trecker.com CEO and co-founder Miro Wilms. “State-of-the-art industrial agricultural engineering has already led to leaps in productivity. Now it’s time to replace paper records and outdated software applications with modern enterprise resource planning.”

“These days, the agricultural sector is increasingly the preserve of large commercial enterprises using the latest machinery,” added Target partner Berthold von Freyberg. “These firms are now also looking for modern software solutions with mobile applications to manage their businesses.”