Softbank-backed Tridge said it has secured funding round at a postmoney valuation of $2.7bn. The latest funding, led by South Korean private equity firm DSAsset, brings Tridge’s total financing to $111.7m since its inception in 2015.
Supply chain disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine is driving increased costs of goods and services, affecting not only the industrial sector (e.g., semiconductors), but also the agriculture industry.
Global food prices have dropped for three consecutive months but still remain relatively high compared to last year, per the 2022 report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
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South Korean startup Tridge wants to address the issue via its online trade platform that matches global food agriculture buyers and sellers. The platform helps from research to ordering and enables buyers to source their food and agriculture items at reasonable prices in more than 150 countries. Vendors can also diversify their sales channels and find buyers (at the proper time) for perishable foods.
The new valuation represents about 440%, or 5.4x, increase over Tridge’s postmoney valuation of $500 million in July 2021 when it raised $60 million in its Series C from Korean venture capital firm Forest Partners.
Tridge says its valuation has soared in about a year because it has generated revenues in Tridge’s fulfillment service business since September 2021 after raising the Series C round. Tridge, which posted less than $7.4 million (10 billion won) in sales last year, now generates between $15 million and $23 million in sales per month, according to the company.
Its fulfillment solution serves as a middleman for more than 15,000 agricultural products, enabling buyers to source and get delivered on time. Additionally, more than 100,000 suppliers across 150 countries can sell their food and agriculture products on Tridge’s platform. The company’s market intelligence service, launched in 2020, offers food supply chain analysis and market reports of agricultural products and commodities like apples, strawberries, tomatoes, avocados, black peppercorn, coconut, garlic, seafood and coffee beans. Tridge owns data covering approximately 15,000 agricultural products with 50,000 price updates. (The company claims it has amassed more than 1 trillion data points cumulatively.) That means users can check current and previous wholesale prices, volume, and market share of every agricultural product Tridge covered.
“Now there are a lot of actual transactions [on Tridge’s platform] occurring in many countries, including the U.S., Brazil, Turkey, India, Vietnam, Australia, Tanzania, the Netherlands, and Canada,” Hoshik Shin, founder and CEO of Tridge, told TechCrunch. “The sales have been on the rise since September last year.”
Source: TechCrunch
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