Auburn ag tech startup lands $3M in seed funding
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An Auburn-based agriculture Software-as-a-Service company has closed on a $3 million seed round of funding. Traction Ag Inc., which has developed a cloud-based financial management platform for farmers, says it will use the funding to further develop the platform and add to its engineering and customer service teams.
Don Aquilano, managing partner of participating investor Allos Ventures, tells Inside INdiana Business the Traction Ag platform fills a gap for farmers.
“There’s a lot of aspects of accounting, finance and operations management that are very specialized for farming, and frankly, the vast majority of farmers are still stuck with either localized, non-cloud-based solutions, or they’re still trying to do it with Quickbooks,” said Aquilano. “It’s a platform that has been built for this customer set and the customer reviews have been great.”
Allos Ventures participated in the investment round along with Hageman Group in Carmel and Elevate Ventures in Indy. Aquilano and Hageman Investments President Shane Hageman will join the Traction Ag Board of Directors.
Traction Ag says the platform brings all farm-specific accounting capabilities into a fully-digital suite that includes filing and paying farmers’ federal and state payroll taxes automatically.
“Farmers need an easy-to-use system that connects field operations to farm accounting to see accurate field, crop, and total farm profitability,” Hageman said in written remarks. “Sixty percent of farmers are using accounting systems that aren’t agriculture specific or disconnected from field operations, therefore missing these valuable farm management insights.”
Aquilano says one of the aspects of Traction Ag that attracted Allos Ventures was the fact that the company’s executives have backgrounds in both tech and farming.
“All of them have worked for software companies, and all of them have run farms. So, they understand the specific needs of the customers because they’ve literally walked a mile in their shoes.”
Traction Ag currently has 16 employees, including eight in Auburn and eight who work remotely. The company says it plans to double its engineering and customer service teams over the next 18 months.
Looking forward, Aquilano says Traction Ag has a long list of product deliverables and the team is continuing to build a purpose-built platform based on feedback from customers.
“I can actually see Traction Ag becoming really a central part of all the farms’ financial management and operational management platform. I see this being a large company not only in the U.S. but globally.”