On January 28, 2014, New York City-based mostly BrightFarms, Inc., which builds and operates hydroponic greenhouses farms in urban locations, announced it raised $ 4.9 million in Series B financing. The round was led by GEN Partners, Emil Capital Partners and BrightFarms founder Ted Caplow. Extra participating investors include Paragon Meals president Elaine Bellin John Mack’s family members office Zac Zeitlin,founding principal at New Ground Ventures and Todd Kimmel, founder of Coskata, former companion at Mayfield Fund and now founding principal at Montage Ventures. This most recent round brings the company’s aggregate funding to $ 9.2 million.
BrightFarms finances, builds and operates hydroponic greenhouses on or near the rooftops of grocery shops. Based mostly on a enterprise model that is been profitable for the renewable power market, it money building of greenhouses and indicators ten-yr, fixed-value purchase agreements with supermarkets.
“We are making an attempt to modify the generate provide chain in this country (United States),” says Brightfarms CEO Paul Lightfoot. “In five many years, we will have greenhouses covering the Midwest and East Coast corridors, displacing a number of prolonged-distance generate objects that utilised to be sourced from the West Coast.”
The capital will enable BrightFarms to fund development of new greenhouses and to construct out its group. It launched its very first greenhouse in Bucks County, Pennsylvania in January 2013, and 8 a lot more are in development, in Washington, DC, St Louis MO, New York City, Chicago, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Oklahoma City, and St Paul MN, in partnership with retail partners like A&P, Cub and Pathmark.
Whilst BrightFarms most latest investment comes at a time when there is growing investment curiosity in foods and agriculture, investment is even now slow in the urban agriculture room. It has therefore been beneficial for BrightFarms to place itself at the intersection of 3 regions of curiosity: escalating client demand for regional, sustainable meals, cleantech (greenhouse technological innovation) and enterprise model innovation, BrightFarms VP of Finance Neal Parikh tells AgFunder.
“There has surely been an boost in investor interest in the sustainable/urban agriculture room considering that we closed our Series A round in 2011,” says Lightfoot, “however, there are not a huge quantity of institutional investors, in distinct, that are seeking at the room.” BrightFarms, hence, continues to function with investors to realize the company model and possibility, in the long run paving the way for each and every company in this area.
Disclosure: I worked at BrightFarm Techniques (now BrightFarms) when it was a consultancy and prior to the company was dissolved and acquired by Paul Lightfoot. I in no way worked with Lightfoot.
BrightFarms Raises $4.9M To Develop Greenhouses On Urban Supermarkets
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