According ReferencesAgriculture insights platform Gro Intelligence closes after failing to secure enough capital to stay afloat.
Details
The company had informed the remaining staff that it would be closing, with a skeleton crew continuing to finish things off.
Between the lines
In March, the company secured funding and laid off 60% of its staff. This led to a lawsuit by former employees for alleged violations of US labor laws.
Zoom out
Gro Intelligence was founded by energy commodities trader Sara Menker in 2012. an $85 million Series B round; in January 2021 by backers including Intel Capital and Africa Internet Ventures, and was named one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential Companies that year.
The company had recently struggled to scale and generate revenue, which resulted in the removal of Sara Menker as CEO.
Digging deeper
Gro Intelligence had signed a deal with Unilever that generated most of its revenue.
A source said:It had been pitched as a food security platform in a small Asian country and an oil-exporting Middle Eastern country, without success. He had also tried to get involved with the US government under various guises, but was only picking up bits and pieces from here and there.β
Asked what went wrong, the source blamed a combination of the challenging funding environment and a βfundamental mismatch between the product and the market.
“They were chasing deals for projects that looked like specialized consulting work as opposed to something that would generate repeatable revenue streams. They’ve also had a number of bad hires and, until very recently, they didn’t have a CFO, so I don’t know that they’ve been able to produce reasonable financials on a quarterly basis for investors. Sara should have brought in a functioning CEO probably two years ago.β
Source: AG Funder News
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