RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – According to Chile’s Office of Agricultural Studies and Policies, the country is number one in fresh grapes, fresh blueberries, dried plums, fresh plums, and fresh plums dehydrated apples. It is number 2 in fresh cherries and walnuts in shell and 3 in shelled walnuts, bulk wine, and frozen raspberries.
They have a growing population but suffer from resource shortages that, in many cases, affect the agri-food industry. Addressing this problem is critical for the country because Chilean agriculture is responsible for 11% of national employment and generates US$10 billion.
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Since 2019 when Uber bought Chilean company Cornershop, the entrepreneurial ecosystem in that country has not stopped growing. In this sense, technologies aimed at the agricultural sector have not been an exception. They have become great allies of producers who, by incorporating them, manage to get closer to meeting the increased demand for food while taking care of natural resources.
Consequently, the Foodtech and Agritech vertical in the entrepreneurial ecosystem has grown in Chile and is transforming a traditional industry. Investment funds are well aware of this scenario and look closely at the country.
Curiously, certain parallelism can be drawn between what is happening in Argentina with the entrepreneurial ecosystem and what is happening in Chile: investors choose these destinations because of a common strength: their excellent human capital.
A paradigmatic case of the growth of startups in Chile is Instacrops, which in 2021 closed a US$2.8 million Series A round led by Genesis Ventures, a Chilean fund whose main investor is the British group OxBridge Capital Partners.
Instacrops installs sensors to measure soil, climate, irrigation system, and plant parameters and captures satellite and drone images, performing automated calculations with cloud-based software on precise data to maximize production.
This tool provides recommendations to farmers through an application. It allows optimizing the use of different resources in crops: such as water, energy, fertilizer use, generating significant savings and better decisions.
The sustained growth of entrepreneurs on both sides of the Andes -and in Latin America in general- is evaluated by the private fund manager Venturance. Pablo Fernández, the company’s fund manager, says: “(Latin America) is a market that is growing, with new investors entering earlier and earlier. Latam is becoming important in its own right and no longer just as an appendage of the USA + Canada”.
Venturance is currently developing its next fund, in which they estimate they will make an average ticket investment in each startup of US$1 million and will have a 100% biotech focus including five specific verticals; industrial processes, medical devices and therapeutics, ag and foodtech, e-health and the convergence between Ai and genetics. This is an excellent opportunity for startups amid expansion as Venturance invests early, from seed to series A.