Indigo Agriculture raises an additional $250m, launches digital grain marketplace

Date:09-24-2018

Indigo Ag, Inc., a company dedicated to harnessing nature to help farmers sustainably feed the planet, announces the launch of Indigo Marketplace, along with the close of a $250M Series E funding round. Indigo Marketplace allows the company to further its vision for decommoditizing agriculture to better support grower profitability, environmental sustainability, and consumer health.

Using algorithms and machine learning, Indigo continues to develop innovative microbial products that increase crop yields in the face of environmental, disease, and pest stress. The company has leveraged this core digital capability to develop software products that enable data-driven farming and increased food system transparency.

Indigo Marketplace maximizes the value of the company's microbial and digital tools and its relationships with thousands of farmers by connecting them directly with buyers and enabling them to receive premium prices for producing high quality food more sustainably.

Marketplace is a digital platform that allows growers and buyers to transact directly with one another for commodity crops at no cost. Buyers on this platform are able to source grain with a range of characteristics (e.g. protein content, milling quality, variety) and production practices (e.g. organic, rain-fed, non-GM). In turn, growers may be paid a price premium based on the quality and identity of their crop.

Transacting digitally, both growers and buyers can increase efficiency, reduce cost, and access a larger market. In addition, Indigo facilitates grain quality testing, transportation, and payment, all of which is managed through the platform. Marketplace supports long-lead bids, future delivery, and basis contracts. The company is licensed as a grain dealer across the 40 states in which it currently operates and expects licenses in the balance in the coming months. Ultimately, Indigo Marketplace efficiently connects buyers and growers, reduces costs throughout the supply chain, and responds to consumer demands for increased food system transparency, quality, and sustainability.

"Marketplace allows me more options to market my grain. The ultimate goal is to get the best price, and Marketplace cuts out the middle man and gets my grain directly to a buyer who is seeking a premium, identity-preserved crop... It's been very simple so far; I signed up and someone reached out to me within 24 hours about a great bid. The wheat bid that I accepted was $0.60 over the local price." - Keven Hiebert, Kansas Grower

"Indigo Marketplace is a progressive way to directly link grain buyers and sellers. The digital platform has a lot of potential to add to the price discovery process and to give us more options for sourcing grain that meets our specifications." - Tod Kalous, Pratt Feeders, LLC
In its first three and a half months, Indigo Marketplace has seen significant traction. Already, there are thousands of growers and buyers on the platform. Growers have entered more than $6B in grain inventory and buyers have entered more than 4,000 bids representing over $2B in demand.

Indigo's Series E financing, announced today, will provide the company with new capital to execute on its product portfolio, with an emphasis on the growth of Marketplace.

Indigo has raised $250M from new and existing investors, including Baillie Gifford, Investment Corporation of Dubai, the Alaska Permanent Fund, and the company's founder, Flagship Pioneering. This financing brings Indigo's total capital raised to over $650M.

"Directly connecting growers and buyers is a critical step towards a food system that is responsive to the voices of consumers. As long as farmers are producing a commodity, they have little economic incentive to produce crops of higher quality or produce them more sustainably. Indigo's Marketplace enables buyers who want differentiated grain to buy it directly from the growers who produce it and reduces the supply chain costs for the whole industry." - David Perry, President and CEO, Indigo