SYDNEY (CU)_Two Australian agrifood tech experts, Sarah Nolet and Matthew Pryor, have raised $35 million for Australia’s first agritech focused investment fund, Tenacious Ventures. Just as markets began to tumble on account of the pandemic in March last year, Tenacious secured an investment of $20 million from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC), an Australian Government-owned Green Bank, and Grok Ventures, a private investment company in New South Wales, both of which later contributed another $5 million which was required to meet the demand the fund was experiencing.
According to Nolet, although they kicked started the capital raising in 2019, over time, they began to realise they were not prepared for what the process involved. “In early 2019 we sent out an email announcing that we were a dedicated specialist agritech VC fund. We thought that was the beginning of the raise process and in our mind it was, but in the eyes of the people we sent the email to, it wasn’t for them. They said congratulations and moved on,” she told The Australian Financial Review. “We just had no idea what we were doing. We weren’t thinking of selling the vision, who the companies were and what the impact would be.”
Moreover, with the COVID-19 pandemic disrupting some of the major economies across the globe, Nolet and Pryor were nervous about the impact the global health crisis would have on the fund.
“It was at least plausible that people would have difficulty responding to the first capital call, not because they lacked commitment, but even the physical movement of money around the planet looked complicated for a while,” Pryor said.
However, by the time they did the final close, the fund had secured a number of investments, which made things easier for the pair.
Nolet and Pryor intends to deploy at least 80 per cent of Tenacious’ capital to Australia, while the remainder will be invested in companies in the United States and New Zealand. So far, the fund has made six investments several start-ups in Australia and a plant-based meat company in the US.
According to CEFC innovation fund director Ben Gust, Tenacious Ventures puts Australia “at the forefront of the innovative solutions”, particularly in the agricultural industry’s efforts to tackle challenges of climate change.
“Tenacious Ventures backs companies with bright ideas that enable farmers to feed the world sustainably and reduce waste,” he said. “By helping realise the huge commercial potential offered by emerging technologies, they are putting Australia at the forefront of the innovative solutions that will allow agriculture to tackle the challenges of climate change.”
