Riga-based startup LANDE has raised €550K in a pre-seed round led by LATBAN, with the participation of BADideas.fund and additional investment coming from a Seedrs campaign. LANDE is a crowdfunding platform focused on financing the agricultural sector. The funding will open gates to Romania for the Latvian startup to support its highly active agricultural sector, currently affected by increased production costs as a result of the current geopolitical situation, as well as the ongoing climate crisis.
LANDE is an agricultural financing and crowdfunding platform that helps small and medium-sized farms obtain capital using machinery, land, or future harvest as collateral.
In 2021, LANDE announced a merger with the agricultural crowdfunding platform LendSecured, becoming a full-service platform for agricultural financing and crowdfunding. The platform has thus far operated in the Baltics and has issued over 4.5 million EUR in loans to date, with 3 million EUR in loans issued in 2022 and the predicted financing volume to reach 15 million EUR in 2023. Altogether, LANDE has provided financing to 300+ local farmers.
“By enabling financial support to small and medium-sized European farms, LANDE is doing more than reducing the regional funding gap – we’re contributing to regional and global food affordability. More than 1700 investors have already registered on the platform to invest in Europe’s agricultural industry. It’s not only a good option to diversify one’s investment portfolio but also a chance to engage in supporting processes that affect billions of people’s lives.” says Nikita Goncars, CEO of LANDE.
