With all the farming games out there, it is about time that somebody addressed the real needs of real farmers and not the virtual ones. VitalFields, a start-up that was created at Garage48 hackathon is attempting to do just that.
The idea is that they will provide a very accurate weather forecast for individual farming fields and in addition to that, they will also give pest and disease warnings. If that wasn’t enough, they are developing this into a real-life FarmVille by allowing Farmers to log and keep track of actions carried out on the fields.
They started out as a team that randomly got together at a Garage48 event, where you aim to build a prototype in just 48 hours (There is going to be one in Helsinki on the 19th-21st of November, by the way). Following the event, they went through the Startup Wise Guys accelerator program and now they have gone on to raise €250 000 in their goals to help farmers.
The round was led by SmartCap with their new fund – Early Fund 2, the venture capital arm of Estonian Development Fund. Two Estonian early stage investors, Arvi Tavasti valduse OÜ and Wiser Financial Advisors OÜ were also on board. The plan is to use the money to provide additional services and to enter new market.
It is good to see a start-up which is trying to tackle a very real problem in an industry which is not normally very popular amongst start-ups and especially given that it all started with a hackathon. Speaking of which, the one in Helsinki is just around the corner and they are looking for more developers to come and join the next big idea, you can check it out here.
