<article>Another agrifood tech investor wants a slice of the Asian pie. 
This time it’s AgFunder, an agrifood tech venture capital platform and media publication based in Silicon Valley. </article>

Another agrifood tech investor wants a slice of the Asian pie. 
This time it’s AgFunder, an agrifood tech venture capital platform and media publication based in Silicon Valley. 
In an interview with DEALSTREETASIA, AgFunder’s chief investment officer and co-founder Michael Dean said the firm plans to launch an Asian accelerator and two funds in Q3 this year. 
“There’s a lot of good research in Singaporean universities,” said Dean. “We want to support that and fund startups in the commercialisation phase. We also want to be able to identify the best tech from wherever it is in the world, and allow those companies to launch in ASEAN from a Singapore base.”
AgFunder’s accelerator will be a 12-week programme based in Singapore, churning two cohorts a year. Each cohort will comprise 8-10 startups, half of which will be agri startups and the other half in food. 
Two funds will also be launched to support these startups. 
The first is a $12-million fund supporting the accelerator and its startups. This will target ticket sizes of $100,000 per startup in exchange for 5-8 per cent equity, and will be deployed over a five-year period. 
The second fund will focus on follow-on rounds, investing in the top 2-4 startups from each cohort. This venture fund will be $30-50 million, with ticket sizes ranging from $500,000 to $2 million across seed to Series B. 
Dean cited strong potential in areas such as personal nutrition, aquaculture, animal health, alternative protein, technologies for small plot farmers and indoor agriculture.
“If you look at a lot of controlled indoor agriculture at the moment, it tends to be about lettuce or leafy greens,” said Dean. “We’re not going to be able to feed the world on leafy greens. We need to do more vegetables and other commodity crops, so how we’re going to get to that next stage is the challenge.” 
AgFunder declined to mention how much it has raised so far, but said it has been actively reaching out to investors in Singapore and globally. 
Dean added that AgFunder Co-Investment III is on track for launch in June this year, and will likely be $5-10 million. 
The venture capital platform has two other co-investment funds. AgFunder Co-Investment I, a $2.1-million fund closed in July 2018, and AgFunder Co-Investment II, a $5-million closed in November 2018. 
These funds were raised directly from its subscribers and deliberately kept small in size.
“We set a defined time to raise and close because we didn’t want it to drag on. Whatever we could raise in three weeks, we would close,” explained Dean. 
“The democratisation of venture capital was what we were really focused on, and we wanted to get as many people as we could. People can invest with as little as $25,000.” 
AgFunder has three revenue streams: venture capital funds, AgFunder News and venture scouting services for corporates. It is backed by Silicon Valley’s 500 Startups, which is its single largest VC shareholder with a 7 per cent stake. 
AgFunder is also backed by VCs from Japan, Russia, and high worth individuals around the world. 
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The Silicon Valley player will raise up to $62 million in two funds to support agri-tech and food companies that join its accelerator.

Silicon Valley's AgFunder to launch Asia accelerator, two funds in 2019

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Silicon Valley's AgFunder to launch Asia accelerator, two funds in 2019

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