During the Techstars Farm to Fork demo day, four of the 11 participating companies announced plans to either relocate their headquarters to the Twin Cities or establish a new office in Minnesota.
Otrafy, ImagoAI, EcoPlant and ConverSight.AI are the new ag-tech arrivals to Minnesota's startup scene.
Vancouver, Canada-based Otrafy is building an enterprise solution for the collection of certification and regulation data in the food supply chain. It will bring its headquarters to St. Paul.
ImagoAI, an artificial intelligence company from New Delhi, India, will also move its headquarters to Minnesota. The company offers tech that spots issues in food, like bugs or other foreign objects, before it reaches consumers.
EcoPlant, a startup from Tel Aviv, Israel, plans to station its U.S. headquarters in St. Paul. It develops a SaaS solution that monitors, controls and optimizes air compressors, which have a number of different uses across the food supply chain, including factory operations and packaging.
Conversight, based in Indianapolis, plans to establish a second office in Minnesota. Starting Up North reports that during the company's time in Techstars, it onboarded eight pilots and added $300,000 in revenue to their business. Conversight's team is working on a Siri-like natural language platform that makes it easier to access data that already exists in other documents.
Farm to Fork startups are developing digital products for the food and agriculture markets. The companies in this year’s accelerator were working on problems such as food waste and supply-chain management, as well as communication and data collection with animals.
The St. Paul-based accelerator is backed by two local industry giants: Ecolab and Cargill. Each of the 11 startups participating in the accelerator had access to more than 100 mentors, including business leaders and experts from Cargill, Ecolab and local food and agriculture entrepreneurs. The startups also received seed capital from the program. This was Farm to Fork’s second year.
