AgroDroneGroup, a Russian startup that uses drones and computer software to closely monitor the condition of soil and crops, has raised 25 million rubles (some $440,000) in investment from the Russian-Belarusian Venture Investment Fund (RBF Ventures). The news was reported in late March by the Skolkovo Foundation, which cited Firrma.
The deal, in which the amount of equity involved was not disclosed, is the first for RBFVI, which was set up in December 2016.
The company plans to use the funds to expand its operations, including by setting up a design engineering office in Belarus and organizing production of drones for neighbouring markets. The technology has already been tried and tested in Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus.
AgroDroneGroup says that its technology can increase harvest yields by up to 20 to 30%, and reduce costs by 15 to 20%, by revealing the precise location of weeds and disease and other crucial information. By providing 3D relief mapping of the land, the technology can be used to prepare the ground more efficiently for a crop, reveal areas of stagnant water and waterlogged soil, and identify the most fertile patches of land.
The Russian government wants to quintuple the use of IT in agriculture by 2024, Igor Kozubenko, head of the department of development and management of state information resources within the Agriculture Ministry, told the Precision Farming conference held at the Skolkovo Technopark in February, noting that digital processes are currently only used in 8-10 percent of the sector.
AgroDroneGroup is a resident company of Skolkovo, the international tech hub under completion on the outskirts of Moscow. Drones and satellites are so crucial to precision farming technologies that their use deserves the separate term of agronautics, Ruslan Kamalov, head of Skolkovo’s biomed cluster, which includes a subsection devoted to agrotech, told the conference.
This article is based on a story which initially appeared in Sk.ru, the information site of the Skolkovo Foundation.
