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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

grain storage

Grain Storage IoT Company TeleSense Acquires Danish Sensor Maker, Webstech

TeleSense, a grain storage and transportation monitoring startup, announced today that it has acquired Webstech, a Danish food storage sensor company. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

We covered TeleSense back in August of last year when the company raised a $6.5 million Series A round of financing, writing:

TeleSense is basically an industrial internet of things (IoT) company that uses a combination of wireless sensors and data tracking to help improve the food supply chain. TeleSense is initially focusing on grain storage and food transport, with its sensors continuously monitoring elements such as temperature and humidity. Using TeleSense’s cloud-based analytics platform, food producers can detect and be notified of anomalies or other problems early, and take action to prevent food spoilage.

TeleSense CEO Naeem Zafar told me by phone last week that the acquisition of Webstech has a number of payoffs for his company. First, Webstech does much the same thing and is already an established player in Europe, giving TeleSense an immediate extension and foothold on that continent. Second, and equally important to Zafar, Webstech has collected a rich data set of more than 60 million records. All this data can be fed into TeleSense’s algorithms and analytics platform for increased knowledge and performance.

As part of the deal Webstech will become TeleSense Europe and Webstech CEO, Thomas Kylling, will be that office’s General Manager, supporting existing European customers and heading up European expansion.

TeleSense is going after a pretty niche market (grain storage monitoring) and the acquisition of Webstech will go a long way towards making it an even bigger player in the narrow space. The addition of European customers adds to TeleSense’s existing pilot programs in the U.S. and Australia. The company has also opened an R&D facility in Vietnam.

AgTech IoT Startup TeleSense Raises $6.5M to Help Prevent Food Spoilage

TeleSense, an agtech startup that provides wireless monitoring for grain and food production, today announced it has raised a $6.5 million Series A round of funding led by Finistere Ventures. Congruent Ventures, Maersk Growth, Rabobank’s Food & Agri Innovation Fund, Radicle Growth and Trailhead Capital, as well as previous investor Plug and Play Ventures also joined the round.

TeleSense is basically an industrial internet of things (IoT) company that uses a combination of wireless sensors and data tracking to help improve the food supply chain. TeleSense is initially focusing on grain storage and food transport, with its sensors continuously monitoring elements such as temperature and humidity. Using TeleSense’s cloud-based analytics platform, food producers can detect and be notified of anomalies or other problems early, and take action to prevent food spoilage. The company says that it has already helped its customers save $3 million dollars worth of grains.

According to the press announcement, TeleSense will use its new funding to invest in research and development of its GrainSafe artificial intelligence platform and build out channels for international expansion.

We’ve covered a lot of farm IoT startups over the past year as there is a huge rush towards giving farmers and other food producers data-driven insights into their operations. Companies like Teralytic and Arable analyze soil and crop conditions, while Connecterra keeps track of cows. The danger with all these data platforms and a potential challenge for TeleSense is vendor fatigue. Farmers want to farm, not implement multiple platforms and analyze millions of data points.

But TeleSense’s transport monitoring technology is also working to help improve the supply chain, an area which is also seeing a lot of action. Companies like AgShift, Zest Labs, and Apeel are all bringing new technologies to market to help reduce food waste.