The Danish-based agritech startup Nordetect announced a seed investment of €1.2 million. A New York-based startup accelerator Luminate NY led the investment round with new participation from Rockstart, SOSV (HAX), PreSeed Ventures and Vækstfonden (The Danish Growth Fund). The company will use the funding to commercialize its proprietary technology platform and provide indoor and vertical farmers in Europe and the East coast of the United States with early access to portable analysis devices and lab-on-a-chip capabilities.
“We are keen to get started on scaling up the manufacturing of our Lab-on-a-chip consumables and deliver to our early customers. The new funding allows us to make the necessary investments in process automation to bolster our supply of the product as we enter our go-to-market segment. We’re excited to have Luminate and all our previous investors on board providing their specialized expertise,” says Keenan Pinto, CEO & Co-founder of Nordetect.
Sharing his real experience with Nordetect, Mark Durno, Managing Partner, Rockstart AgriFood, expresses his interest in the future of Nordetect:
“Having personally managed both soil and hydroponic production, I know how important it is for farmers and growers to get access to accurate nutrient assessment for optimal plant growth and yield. We invested in Nordetect because they have further enabled existing wet lab chemical analysis by combining new technologies, empowering the customer to own this faster and more affordable technique as and when they need it.”
Founded in 2016 in Copenhagen by the founders Keenan Pinto and Palak Sehgal, they both have a solid background in bioengineering of plants, specifically in roots and flowers, and have spent years traveling across China, the U.S., and the Netherlands to develop the product. Keenan and Palak know that the usual process of collecting and testing soil and water samples is very time-consuming which would take up from 3 days to 3 weeks to get the result. Thus, Nordetect was invented as a one-click device and test kits that can test multiple nutrients simultaneously and get the most accurate result in a matter of minutes.
Nordetect is an analytical hardware company that produces Lab-on-a-chip devices for environmental and agricultural analysis. The company was founded in the hope to bring medical-grade technology to the farming industry. With Nordetect, farm managers, agricultural service providers, and indoor growers can remove risk and use valid data that is easy to understand and implement to ensure richer harvests.
