Agricultural biotechnology startup BioPrime AgriSolutions Pvt. Ltd on Monday said it has secured Rs 9 crore (around $1.1 million) as a part of its pre-Series A funding round led by venture capital firm Inflexor Ventures, with participation from the existing investor Omnivore.
The Pune-based firm plans to deploy the fresh proceeds for expansion, ramping up its production capabilities and for its product sale registrations.
Founded by Renuka Karandikar, Amit Shinde and Shekhar Bhosle in 2018, BioPrime is a platform that develops agribiologicals which modulate the basic physiological responses in crops using small biomolecules, the company said in a statement.
“At Bioprime, we are focusing on discovering fundamental aspects of plant communication, developing novel biologicals based on trait-modifying microbes and physiology-modulating molecules,” said Karandikar.
“The founding team of BioPrime is equipped to solve the complex food security problem brought to the forefront by climate change. Such a technology platform fits well with Inflexor’s investing thesis of backing science companies from the Indian deeptech ecosystem,” said Pratip Mazumdar, partner at Inflexor Ventures.
The venture capital firm backs deep and emerging technology startups ranging from pre-Series A to B stages. In August, VCCircle had reported that the venture capital firm is looking to invest in 7-8 spacetech and telecom startups in the next six to eight months.
In July last year, Inflexor marked the final close of its new B2B-focused sector agnostic fund at over Rs 600 crore fund, overshooting its target corpus of Rs 500 crore. Limited Partners (LPs) in the fund include SBICap Ventures, Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) via its fund of funds for startups and Survam (Sumankant Munjal Family Office).
Though not much investments have been witnessed in the agribiotech space, but the broader agritech segment in India has attracted significant investor interest in the past years.
According to a Bain report last year, private equity and venture capital investments in the agritech segment increased to $329 million in 2020 from $296 million in 2019. The segment will see significant investment and is projected to grow to a $30–$35 billion market by 2025, it said.
Some of the significantly funded startups in this space include Ninjacart, DeHaat, WayCool and AgroStar.
