French startup Sencrop just raised an $18 million Series B funding round led by JVP. The company helps farmers mitigate all sorts of risks, from extreme weather events to diseases that affect various crops. It is both a hardware and software play with a forecasting service that you can access through a subscription product.
Weather forecasting is a complicated industry as it requires a ton of data to create an accurate forecasting model. That’s why Sencrop is drawing inspiration from Netatmo or Waze and betting on crowdsourcing to improve its service.
Sencrop customers can buy their own connected stations to measure temperature, humidity, rainfall, wind speed and sunlight. These weather stations all contribute to Sencrop’s real-time data.
And it’s been working well as the company has already sold over 20,000 weather stations. In France, there’s one weather station per 20 square kilometers on average. The company operates in 20 countries and has office in France, the Netherlands, the U.K., Germany, Spain and Italy.
Customers can see current weather conditions and export historical data. But they can also move around the map, set up alerts and select between multiple forecasting models to prepare for the next few days and anticipate agronomic risks. Sencrop can help you when it comes to water stress and irrigation management as well. There are multiple subscription levels that let you access more features.
Sencrop also provides multiple integrations with Decision Support Tools, such as Rimpro, VitiMeteo, fruitweb, 360 viti and Idroplan. This metric-driven way of growing fruits, cereals or vines should lead to better productivity and an improvement on the bottom line.
In addition to JVP, other investors in today’s round include EIT Food, Stellar Impact, IRD Management and some of the company’s existing shareholders, such as Bpifrance, Demeter IM and NCI Waterstart.
“Sencrop’s mission is to democratize precision farming and reduce crop risks for farmers”, Sencrop co-founder and General Manager Martin Ducroquet said in a statement. “We have developed a unique microclimate technology which today allows more than 20,000 professionals — farmers, winegrowers, fruit growers, etc. — to access ultra-precise and ultra-local information for better daily monitoring of their crops and the risks on their plots.”
Up next, the company wants to accelerate its international expansion, starting with North America.