The agritech robotics company Niqo Robotics (previously TartanSense) revealed that Brida Innovation Ventures led a $13 million Series B round of funding. Significant contributions were also made to the round by Omnivore, an existing investor, and Fulcrum Global Capital, a new investor.
With this, Niqo has raised $21 million in total funding, which includes a $2 million seed round in 2019 and a $5 million Series A round from FMC, Omnivore, and Blume Ventures in August 2021.
Niqo, according to its founder and CEO Jaisimha Rao, will enter new markets and quicken the commercial adoption of spot spray worldwide.
Compact agricultural robots equipped with AI-driven computer vision technology are the specialty of Niqo Robotics, which promises to lower expenses and boost profitability. It reduces chemical usage by up to 90% by using a proprietary AI camera with deep learning models to identify and spray selectively on target plants.
Niqo asserts that it will commercialize more than 90,000 acres of land in 2023–2024, helping more than 1,800 farmers.
With only Rs 1.3 crore in revenue in FY23, the nine-year-old company’s Indian entity stayed mostly in the pre-revenue stage, even though the audited FY24 numbers have not yet been released. Its losses increased twofold to Rs 9.8 crore at the same time.
As of the most recent tranche, Brida Innovation and Blume Ventures held 18% and 10.7% of the total number of external stakeholder positions in Niqo, respectively, with Omnivore Partners holding the largest stake at 25.7%.
Among its rivals are Zenrobotics, SwarmFarm, and Ecorobotis.
