#3: One Agtech, one Biotech, Spanish early-stage, impact startups entering the global stage
One protects invisible Agri-foods assets in a blockchain. The other saves lives by quickly detecting Sepsis. These high-potential startups based in Spain are likely to be NEW to you.
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Deeply researched, handcrafted from content in English and Spanish to paint a detailed picture, rich in facts, references and images.
Presenting 2 high-potential, impact startups/week: (premium in bold)
Company name with links
Sector
Launch date and HQ
Challenge
Product/solution
Mission statement
Business model
Market potential
Growth Signal
Competitive edge
Financing
Investors
Employee count
Founder profiles with links
Team dynamics incl. video
Future
Sources online
Wishing you a beautiful summer from Stockholm,
Caroline Lagergren, founder of Expand To Spain
Company name: The Food Chainers
Sector: Agtech/Blockchain
Launch date and HQ
The company Food Chainers was founded in 2022. The team is based in Madrid.
Challenge: Valorise solutions for food waste
To simplify, to solve the food waste problem, we need many, many different solutions, by many, many different, very smart innovators. Innovators who also get compensated for their ideas. Today though, too many extraordinary innovations fall outside of traditional IP systems.
The challenge is well articulated by Juan Novelli’s, one of the founder’s, in his latest Substack about The Invisible Power. What Intellectual Property Really Is. He writes:
“Most scientists, developers, creators and entrepreneurs aren’t trained to think of their knowledge as an asset. And that blindness is costing billions every year.”
In fact, only 10–20% of innovations from public research ever reach the market.
Source: OECD & AUTM Scorecard
He gives some examples of valuable knowledge assets that can’t be patented:
Scientific discoveries like a newly isolated protein
Natural processes or unmodified genes
A molecule without a clearly defined use
Solution: Protects invisible agri-food assets
The Food Chainers is building solutions to protect, trace, and commercialise the intangibles that drive the AgriFood sector. From functional food formulations to smart farming models.
Their platform transforms knowledge, developments, patents and formulations into traceable and investable digital assets, creating a new intellectual property market for the global foodtech sector.
Their technology ensures the security of intellectual assets and enables their effective monetisation through controlled and traceable access, using Blockchain technology.
Said in another way, their system tokenises know-how, technological developments, formulations, patents, and expert knowledge. That way, the platform enhances traceability, collaboration, and the value of innovation across the food industry.
With this token, called a CITE token, monetisation of knowledge, transformed into intellectual property, becomes possible and can support the reduction of food waste.
Mission statement
Transforming Food Waste Into Wealth
Business model: B2B/PaaS
The Food Chainers help startups, smaller foodtech companies and corporates to protect and monetise their knowledge without exposing it.
They can license and securely commercialise their knowledge-based assets, ensuring protection, monetisation, and control of their valuable contributions.
Using a PaaS model, (Platform as a service), their customers pay a monthly fee along with a commission on each transaction. The companies in turn, get paid every time their innovation is used.
Market potential: part of EUR 132 billion in the EU
In a pitch, they resembled their solution to being a Spotify for Agtech innovators solving the food waste challenge, so my thinking goes to that market, instead of ´AgTech involving blockchain´ which is a much broader market to quantify.
In the EU alone, over 59 million tonnes of food is discarded annually, amounting to a staggering 132 kg per inhabitant and a market loss of approx. EUR 132 billion.
-Facts by the European Patent Office, related to an Agtech startup featured earlier.
More than pure financials, another perspective from the company’s website, is that 10% of the current human population, approx. 800 millions people, still go hungry.
AgTech deals involving blockchain startups
In terms of capital raised, one of the biggest rounds is from March 2020, when GrainChain raised $8.2M of venture funding in a round led by Medici Ventures.
GrainChain's farm management software utilises a tamper-proof technology to provide blockchain-based data service for organic farms or internationally certified farms which export products or food ingredients. This capability helps farmers produce eco-farm products of the highest quality. For more deals see Sources.
Growth Signal
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