The Fund invests in AgTech startups that are preselected by the SproutX accelerator. The SproutX accelerator is a collaboration between corporate, research and government organizations including the National Farmers Federation, Findex, the State Government of Victoria and Ruralco.

 

The unique feature of the Fund is that it both invests at the seed stage and offers AgTech startups follow-on funding at both the angel stage and later-stage funding rounds.

 

The Fund’s investment objective is to target an annualised return of >20% over 7-9 years by investing in a diversified portfolio of approximately 30-50 capital efficient AgTech startups. Generally, the startups will be accessed from the SproutX accelerator but in some cases, may be sourced from the broader AgTech startup ecosystem.

 

The 4 key tenets of the Fund’s investment strategy are:

 

1. Invest early (seed/angel) at relatively low valuations.

2. Build a diversified portfolio, following on in the best startups at angel and later-stage funding rounds.

3. Focus on scalable, capital-efficient AgTech start-ups; and

4. Target the $50-100 million M&A/trade sale market for exits.