Novastar Ventures leads investment in agtech company

Agtech company Ignitia has closed a $4.2 million financing round led by Novastar Ventures, followed by IKEA Social Entrepreneurship. The funds will be used to expand Ignitia’s agricultural decision-making support into the Brazilian market, as well as extend its sub-Saharan Africa footprint to new markets.

The financing round also saw participation from Future Foodways, Mercy Corps, Norrsken and Finca International.

Ignitia’s services enable agricultural players to make better timed decisions on all farming activities and achieve improved farming outcomes – from preparing the land to harvesting the crop. Today, Ignitia serves 1.9 million farmers across West Africa, mainly in Ghana, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, and Mali.

Ignitia was founded in 2010 by three scientists from renowned research institutions such as NASA, who joined forces to address the seemingly impossible task of producing reliable tropical weather forecasts. Five years and 20,000 man hours later, in 2015 the team produced the world’s first hyperlocal, highly accurate tropical weather forecast. Predictive AI, proprietary algorithms, and uninterrupted 3-D multisource data come together to create a tropical forecast that is more than twice as accurate as global models in tropical regions.

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