Imagine a small boy in the beautiful, lively city of Lahore with a dream to go to MIT for engineering. He never did ever end up at MIT, but that did not come in the way of him becoming a successful engineer turned entrepreneur in the Silicon Valley. Now, he is an entrepreneur who might as well be called Midas because everything he touches turns into literal gold.
TeleSense is Zafar’s startup in the Silicon Valley which uses Internet of Things (IoT) to enhance the way we store grain. Zafar wrote in one statement that due to an increase in the usage of bumper crops there has been a surplus supply of grain which is causing a lot of problems as far as storage is concerned. He believes that smart decisions based on date will help “decrease the pressure of seasonal pricing fluctuations, global trade and tariff concerns, and currency issues.”
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He also stated that the desired aim of this product he is developing in this startup aims to give the storage operators a coherent view of all the grain which they are storing so that potential hiccups can be dealt with before they impact businesses. Essentially, this technology will radically change how we store grain and how we transport it, but more importantly it will change how suppliers (farmers) and grain elevators will present their grain to the buyers, ABCD commodity trading houses (ADM, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus).
Thus far, TeleSense has successfully secured a large amount of funding from two basic sources. The first one is Maersk Growth, venture capitalist facet of Maersk, which has made its initial agtech investment in TeleSense as a part of the Danish logistics and transportation giant’s recently launched startup acceleration program, FoodTrack. The second one is from Series A. It has raised $6.5 million in funds from a vast group of “strategic, industry investors, and VCs.” The specifics are listed below:
- Finistere Ventures
- Rabobank’s Food and Agriculture Innovation Fund
- Congruent Ventures
- Radicle Growth
- Plug & Play Ventures
