Agri-tech startup Intello Labs gets seed funding from Nexus, Omnivore

Artificial intelligence-focussed agritech startup Intello Labs Pvt. Ltd has raised $2 million (Rs13.7 crore) in seed round from homegrown venture capital firm Nexus Venture Partners and impact investor Omnivore.

“This funding will help us strengthen our product and rapidly scale globally,” Milan Sharma, CEO of Intello Labs, said in a statement.
Bengaluru-based Intello Labs uses artificial intelligence to identify defective agriculture commodities such as tomatoes and wheat by scanning images. The AI engine also grades the commodities, derives insights on quality and offers recommendations.

The startup was established in May 2016 by IIT Bombay alumni Sharma, Nishant Mishra and Himani Shah, along with Devendra Chandani, an MBA graduate from Gurugram's Management Development Institute.

Sharma, who is the CEO, previously worked with companies such as Snapdeal and Evalueserve while Mishra, who is the CTO, earlier worked with Yahoo, Amazon and Canon. Shah worked with PeopeStrong HR Services and Deutsche Bank in the past, and Chandani with SAP Labs India and KPMG, among others, before starting up.

The company aims to become the de-facto quality platform across agri-business value chains for trading, procurement, grading, pricing, marketing and traceability. It claims to have validated the use cases with pilot customers and is seeing significant sales traction.

“Without the standardization and digitization of quality assessment of agricultural produce, e-Mandi and digital agriculture markets will remain a distant dream. Intello Labs is revolutionizing quality assessment and grading for agricultural produce, utilizing technology advancements in AI and ML,” said Puneet Kumar, Vice President, Nexus Venture Partners.

The startup had earlier secured Rs 2.5 crore in angel investment across two rounds and was also part of two accelerators: Indigram Labs and JioGenNext.

Deals in agri-tech segment:

Intello Labs joins a number of agri-tech startups that have recently raised funding. Here are a few of those.

• March 2019: DeHaat, an online marketplace for farm products and services, raised $4 million (Rs 27.5 crore) in a pre-Series A round from Omnivore and US-based agri-tech-focused investor AgFunder.
• March 2019: TartanSense raised $2 million (Rs 15 crore) in a seed funding round led by venture capital firms Omnivore, Blume Ventures and Beenext.
• March 2019: Pune-based AgroStar, which operates a direct-to-farmer mobile-based retail platform, raised $27 million (Rs 187 crore) in its Series C funding round led by Bertelsmann India Investments.