ABLC Preview – The Top 10 Industry Trends to Follow

CROPS

The news: This week we reported that Provivi has completed a monster $85 million Series C financing. If you know the company, you wouldn’t be all that surprised, the buzz is strong, but if you’re not acquainted, welcome to this late October online meeting of the “WHO THE **** ARE THESE GUYS (and how the *** did they raise this level of money)?” Club.

The round was co-led by Pontifax Global Food and Agriculture Fund and a global investment fund. The round also included new investor Tybourne Capital Management. Existing investors Kairos Ventures, Spruce Capital, Lanx Capital, and BASF Venture Capital also participated in the round. Bosun Hau, Managing Director and Co-Head of Private Equity at Tybourne Capital Management, will also serve as a board observer.

Proceeds from the Series C financing will support the launch of Provivi’s pheromone products as part of the Company’s mission to bring this innovative solution to farmers around the world.

Why significant and what’s next: We have focused too long on yield and pest-killing crop protection, the former creates more food for pests and the latter simply clears the niche rather than closing it. Technologies like Pivot Bio and Provivi represent a real alternative in biotechnology — using nature’s own systems to de-fang some of its most egregious impacts. In Pivot’s case, eliminating the need to apply so much fertilizer, in Provivi’s case, reducing the need to apply so many pest-killing chemicals.