10 AgriTech startups from Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Greece, the Czech Republic have been elected as finalists for Nextcelerator

• 50 AgriTech startups in Central and Eastern Europe applied for the Nextcelerator accelerator

• SeedBlink, Microsoft and Agricover will provide entrepreneurs with a great mix of technology, finance and access to mentors with great experience in agriculture

• Nextcelerator aims to support the most innovative technology businesses in the field of agriculture.

Bucharest, March 25th, 2022: Fifty AgriTech startups in Central and Eastern Europe signed up for Nextcelerator. Nextcelerator is a digital accelerator created by Agricover, SeedBlink, and Microsoft in order to support startups in CEE which bring up the tech of agriculture.

Startups selected include marketplace projects, agrifood projects, and farm process optimization projects, most of them already post-revenue, with traction under their belt and the intention to refine their product and scale it in broader geographies.

Agriniser is a Bulgarian agriculture brokerage platform that simplifies the buying and selling of crops. Launched in 2019, the platform provides trading services (buyers and sellers trade and negotiate anonymously on the marketplace platform) and market analysis of the CEE agricultural industry. Learn more at www.agriniser.com

Agro-U is a Greek recruitment platform for agricultural workers. It offers permanent and temporary (seasonal) employment opportunities and has 8000 registered users, including 700 farms. Learn more at www.agro-u.com

Fermier Bun is a Romanian platform that connects local food producers with potential customers who live nearby. The company operates as an online store offering checkout and delivery. It has 2 logistics centers: one for vegetable products and one for meat, dairy and similar products. Learn more at www.fermierbun.ro

Kolta is a Romanian marketplace platform that allows farmers to buy inputs and sell their harvest wholesale. The platform works as a digital cooperative for farms to achieve critical mass for transactions. Learn more at www.kolta.ro

Ondo is a Bulgaria-based smart farming solutions startup for precision irrigation, crop watering and climate control for all crops. Ondo helps farmers reduce the time and labor required to manage irrigation and nutrition processes, thereby reducing consumption of water, energy and other valuable resources. Learn more at www.ondo.io

Proofminder is a Hungarian AI platform for precision agriculture - crop/leaf monitoring for farmers as a SaaS platform with drone production partners. The platform targets large agribusinesses in CEE, seed producers, apple growers (& fruit tree growers) and other market players. Learn more www.proofminder.com

TBL Digital is a Romanian farmland management solution. It enables customers to keep track of all documents and other information related to their land, such as topographic data, maps, permits, cadastres, as well as real-time data related to their crops. Learn more at www.smartland.pro

Ullmanna has developed a hardware product that attaches to tractors to cut weeds in the row. The product comes from the Czech Republic. The product detects the plant and decides whether to cut it or not. It provides an environmentally friendly solution to pesticides or other inorganic liquids. Learn more at www.ullmanna.eu

Vetemenyem is a Hungarian interactive mobile application for amateur gardeners that provides knowledge on how to grow specific plants; a step-by-step guide to growing your own garden. The garden planner shows the user which plants should be planted next to each other to promote plant growth. Learn more at www.vetemenyem.hu

Verdefood is a Romanian marketplace that connects local farmers around Bucharest and Cluj-Napoca with local demand for fresh vegetables and fruits. In addition, the platform provides farmers with tools to better manage their supply processes. Learn more at www.verdefood.co

Selected businesses will benefit from mentoring, training sessions, courses, business planning and connections with potential partners and investors.

Agricover, the Agribusiness market leader in Romania, will support startups in terms of business strategy. The partner validates the businesses’ MVP and facilitates the testing of ideas with important players, such as professional farmers and mentors. Moreover, Agricover offers training programs on finance management in Agritech business, refining a revenue model, scaling up strategy, writing a successful business plan, go-to-market strategy and leadership.

The European investment platform SeedBlink offers its experience in the field of financing, supporting startups with information about financing options, crowdinvesting campaigns and important lessons learned from over 50 such campaigns.

Experts from Microsoft for Startups program provide technology mentoring, covering topics such as intellectual property, technology, and product development, and building successful partnerships with technology vendors.

About Agricover

Agricover is the leader of the agribusiness market in Romania, driving innovative solutions that transform the business and farmers’ life on the long run, creating progress and prosperity at a social scale.

Right from its establishment, the Agricover Group aimed at serving the Romanian farmers and providing them with innovative solutions, so that they may strengthen their productivity in a sustainable manner, by having access to performant agricultural technologies on an international level, financing solutions adapted to the specifics of the agricultural area and digital agriculture services.

Agricover Holding SA includes Agricover SA (specializing in the distribution of agricultural technologies), Agricover Credit IFN SA (the non-banking financial institution specializing in farmers’ funding) and Agricover Technology SRL through which the Group provides the farmers with access to the latest innovations in the world digital agriculture, thus facilitating them the transformation of the way they carry out their daily business, so that they can make real-time decisions.

Agricover. The next generation in agribusiness.

About SeedBlink

SeedBlink is the fastest growing investing platform specialized in sourcing, vetting, financing, and scaling European tech start-ups. Our vision is to shape Europe’s tech future by creating an investment platform that has the reach of crowdfunding, the flexibility of angel investors, and the structure of venture capital.

SeedBlink's community is at the heart of the platform's success, along with a rigorous selection of technology pre-seed and seed start-ups & their passionate teams. We aim to open investments in start-ups to real people and do this by building a modern platform, a tech savvy community, and the network and expertise to grow companies post investment.

About Microsoft

Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.