Get To Know: The Yield Lab Asia Pacific

28 OCT 2021

Three-time SLINGSHOT sponsor and creator of The Yield Lab Agtech Innovation Award

Since it was founded in 2014, The Yield Lab has believed in sustainably revolutionising the world’s agri-food systems. As one of the first and most active Agtech-focused early-stage funds, The Yield Lab has impacted the agri-food industry by investing in over 60 Agtech companies from Seed to Series A, several valued at over $180M USD with three successful exits.

Expanding to the Asia Pacific in 2019, The Yield Lab Asia Pacific now joins a global network extending across North America, Europe, and Latin America.

To realise its vision and mission in the region, The Yield Lab Asia Pacific created The Yield Lab AgTech Innovation Award and has partnered with SLINGSHOT since 2019 as a cash-prize sponsor. By attracting talented and promising AgTech innovators to the SLINGSHOT start-up pitching competition, The Yield Lab has been able identify numerous AgTech innovations and hast awarded their AgTech Innovation Award to Nutrition Innovation in 2019, and ProAgni in 2020.

Nutrition Innovation is a company that produces a range of healthier, naturally low glycemic sugars, and ProAgni produces antibiotics and ionophore-free ruminant feeds and supplements that improve animal performance through better feed conversion.

Read on to learn more about some of The Yield Lab Asia Pacific’s portfolio companies.

Fasal

Alt text for image on Isomer site (Shailendra Tiwari, Founder, Fasal, on the fields with Fasal’s device. Photo kindly provided by Fasal)

Fasal was a selected as a Top 100 finalist of SLINGSHOT 2020. It is a precision agriculture company that has developed proprietary algorithms to prescribe farming actions for plantation crops like palm oil, and tropical fruits like bananas. Fasal has helped farmers save 50% in disease and pest management costs, reduced water usage by 50% and is on track to roll out to 22,000 hectares of small and large farms by 2022. Fasal was recently included in Forbes Asia’s 100 To Watch list, and also won ‘Best use of AI in Agriculture’ at the Global AI Summit 2021.

CreditAI

CreditAI also participated in SLINGSHOT 2020 and was amongst the Top 500 start-ups. CreditAI enables smallholder farmers access to financing via its proprietary credit rating and close-looped cashless loan system which has resulted in 98% repayment of loans. CreditAI targets to roll out its solution to 100,000 farmers by 2022.

Umami Meats

Another recent investment by The Yield Lab Asia Pacific is Singapore-based Umami Meats. The company’s product replaces fetal bovine serum in the production of cell-based meat. Focused on seafood, Umami Meat’s innovation will significantly lower the cost of producing cell-based seafood. Umami Meats has made it to the semi-final round of the XPRIZE Feed the Next Billion competition.

DiMuto

Alt text for image on Isomer site (Image kindly provided by DiMuto)

DiMuto is the latest addition to The Yield Lab portfolio featuring a suite of farm-to-fork track-and-trace solutions that create transparency across complex fresh produce supply chains. These solutions improve fruit and vegetable produce quality, reduce trade claims disputes, and enable fresh trade financing with complete end-to-end data oversight. DiMuto currently provides its affordable solution for all stakeholders of the supply chain with customers spanning across the globe.

The Yield Lab’s mission is to enable entrepreneurs to sustainably revolutionise agri-food systems and wants to invite founders, innovators, and investors to join them on this journey. If you are an AgTech start-up with an innovative solution, or an investor who is interested in gaining access to innovations with impactful returns, or an Investor who wants to become part of the success being achieved, please reach out to Michelle Chee, principal of The Yield Lab Asia Pacific at michelle@theyieldlab.com. For more information, please visit www.theyieldlab.asia

This article was brought to you by SLINGSHOT, Asia’s most exciting deep tech start-up pitching competition, in partnership with The Yield Lab. Catch innovative technology pitches and connect with the global start-up community at the livestream of the SLINGSHOT 2021 Grand Finals from 8–10 November 2021, held at the Singapore Week of Innovation and Technology (SWITCH). Tickets available here.