January 21, 2022

By Lynda Kiernan-Stone, Global AgInvesting Media

Founded in 2017 by Scott Sungwoo Choi, Charlie Sanghoon Shin, and Luke Donghyun Ahn, South Korea’s Greenlabs is many things to many people as part of its goal to digitize agricultural value chains. 

With the goal of facilitating connections between farmers and customers, Greenlabs’ services includes Sinsun Market – a B2B marketplace for fresh produce connecting growers to more than 10,000 buyers, and Farm Morning Smart Farm – a smart platform providing data-driven recommendations to farmers on crop growth and precision control of factors such as temperature and humidity in real time.

It also includes an AI-driven app serving more than half a million farmers (or one-in-four farmers in South Korea) with regional weather forecasts, agronomy services, and a fresh produce market price ticker that can also adjust heating and cooling systems or retract roof panels or doors based on need.

Driving growth for these endeavors, global investor BRV Capital Management led a 170 billion won (approximately US$140 million) Series C that also included South Korean investor SK Square and early-stage venture capitalist Skylake Capital.

Pitchbook data indicates that agtech and food tech investments across Southeast Asia have been rising over the past 10 years, peaking in 2020 at $4.4 billion across 59 deals. However, last year saw a sharp decline in committed capital at $1.1 billion across 51 deals. 

Despite this, Greenlabs seems to be bucking the trend. This round brings the company’s total funding to-date to US$170 million and its value to within shooting distance of unicorn status at $900 million, following an $18 million Series B in early 2021 and a $5.8 million Series A in the spring of 2020.

Company CEO Charlie Sanghoon Shin noted how the company has quickly drilled down into Korea’s digital agricultural market, saying that the company is “well positioned to become a unicorn” at the rather young age of five years.

Despite this rapid success, South Korea’s ag sector lags behind other industries in the country, with an aging farmer population (about 46 percent of South Korea’s farming households are older than 65 years) and a general resistance to the adoption of technologies. In Korea, farmland area totals only 1.6 hectares per farmer (compared to 54 in the Netherlands), and those who do choose to become farmers can expect to earn only 60 percent of typical urban income, according to Hojin Kang, agricultural advisor to the Netherlands, who noted that this income level dampens farmers’ ability to afford tech integrations.

South Korea is addressing these challenges, however, through various channels, including its “Digital Green New Deal Plan” launched by the government in September 2020 to foster a shift toward a more sustainable economy and to scale up smart agriculture.

For Greenlabs, the company plans to address the need for greater technology by using the capital gained through this funding round to support its global expansion. Already with a presence in Vietnam and China, where its technologies are used in the production of strawberries and ginseng, the company stated that when examining markets further afield, the startup intends to establish strategic partnerships with already existing local players. 

–  Lynda Kiernan-Stone is editor with GAI Media, and is managing editor and daily contributor for Global AgInvesting’s AgInvesting Weekly News and  Agtech Intel News, as well as HighQuest Group’s Oilseed & Grain News. She can be reached at lkiernan-stone@globalaginvesting.com. 

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