Technology and vineyards are two terms, that are rarely heard or spoken together. Despite of the fact, that wines (which is one of the more popular products coming out of a vineyard) continue to remain one of the most relishing, regal liquor ever consumed by mankind, there’s still hardly any tech breakthrough that has happened in the vineyard industry. Well, one startup has realised that, and has hence is building a business on that.
Meet Terraview, a startup based out of Singapore that specialises in real-time, data-backed monitoring of vineyards. Terraview’s platform uses advanced image processing, machine learning and augmented reality to enable round-the-clock monitoring of precious vineyards. This also helps monitor crucial nutrient and soil details.
The startup does this by using — well you guessed it — drones. Its drones collect high quality images and process it using their proprietary algorithm to give you a real time pulse of your vineyard in your hands.
Well, the idea certainely seems to have resonated with investors, and a few marquee ones at that. As a result, a clutch of high profile angels, including Binny Bansal (co-founder of India’s $16 Bn e-commerce star Flipkart), Kalyan Krishnamurthy, group chief executive of Flipkart among others have put in close to $800K in the startup.
Other investors, who have also put in money in Terraview’s Series A round of funding include, Sujeet Kumar, co-founder of Udaan (India’s fastest startup to achieve unicorn status), Tanglin Venture Partners, Ankit Nagori (co-founder of food, fitness and wellness company CureFit) and Abhishek Sharma (chief operating officer of restaurant technology solutions company Dineout).
“Viticulture globally is at an inflection point. The demand for wine is at a high and it will continue to grow over the next decade. The current global Wine market is a little over $300 billion and is expected to touch $400 billion-plus by 2020. With changing weather pattern and this unprecedented global demand, optimising for quality to produce better and driving efficiency to produce higher volumes are going to be significantly important for the future and Terraview is solving for this global need”, says Prateek Srivastava, who co-founded the SaaS company this year with co-founder Piyush Harsh.
In a prepared statement, the startup says that it will use this fresh capital for going deep in solving complex problems of fungal disease, bacterial infection, soil hydration, canopy cover and weather assessment using proprietary technology.
Terraview is currently live in Spain, and expects to begin operations Italy and France over the course of the next few months. According to the official statement, the startup currently has teams working across Zurich, Madrid, Moscow, Toronto and Florida.
