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Two newly-joined Agri-TechE members, NatureMetrics and BigSis, were featured in Bloomberg’s “25 Start-ups to Watch”. The inaugural Bloomberg list aims to unveil innovative companies reinventing medicine, entertainment, finance, autonomous driving, data analysis and more. There were 1,500 nominations, with the final 25 companies created by people with a vast array of experiences and backgrounds from all over the UK.
The aim of the list was “to find the most interesting areas of innovation, the best ideas, the smartest founders.” The result was an eclectic mix of entrepreneurial companies.
“I’m truly thrilled by our inclusion as one of these 25 companies,” says BigSis Founder and CEO Glen Slade.
Chemical-free pest control
BigSis is tackling the problem of fruit flies in soft fruit. It has automated the rearing of sterile male insects that mate with wild females to reduce populations and prove affordable, chemical-free pest control.
In a project with NIAB and Berry Gardens, the UK’s largest berry suppliers, the technology reduced the population of destructive “spotted wing drosophila” in a strawberry crop by 91%. Last year, BigSis raised £4.5 million, led by UK agritech fund Regenerate Ventures.
Glen Slade continues: “To have been selected from what was undoubtedly an impressive bank of entries is a great vote of confidence in the value of our work to reduce chemical insecticide usage and surely reflects BigSis’ unique and innovative approach to this problem.”
Making biodiversity-monitoring more accessible
NatureMetrics is a biodiversity-monitoring company that analyses traces of DNA found in soil and water samples to identify the organisms present.
The company says it is 10 times cheaper than traditional survey methods and identifies five times the number of species. Its platform is used by over 500 companies in 100 countries and it has recently launched a ‘nature intelligence platform’ to support impact reporting. The company has raised over £20 million in the last 18 months and won the recent Tesco Agri T-Jam, an ag-tech startup competition.
Value of the Agri-TechE ecosystem
There are many exciting companies within the Agri-TechE ecosystem and ahead of the Agri-TechE REAP conference we experienced a big influx of new members.
The theme around ‘innovation in a time of extreme events’ resonated with many people and the benefits of being interconnected to tackle these challenges, has never been more apparent.
Being part of an ecosystem, sharing ideas with others from different perspectives and using networks to access skills, contacts and knowledge is vital for innovative companies, and among the benefits of joining Agri-TechE
To find out more information about membership do get in contact.
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