Agro.Сlub enables agriculture input manufacturers and grain companies to significantly improve their commercial effectiveness, better connect with farmers, and support channel partners' business. Deal co-led by Rabo Frontier Ventures and VentureFriends. The company is expanding across Western Europe and the Americas--starting with a launch in Spain and the UK--and rolling out its fintech solutions to more existing markets.

U.S.-based agtech startup Agro.Club has raised a $5M Series-A round to fuel expansion of its platform that connects input suppliers and grain buyers with farmers using the latest digital commercial effectiveness and fintech solutions.

The round was co-led by Rabo Frontier Ventures—a highly reputable and recognized, agriculture-focused VC—and VentureFriends, a leading VC in the marketplace, SaaS and fintech sectors. Existing investors Speedinvest and Elevator Ventures, and a number of agriculture industry executives also participated in the round.

The Agro.Club platform is used by seed, crop protection, animal nutrition companies, as well as other suppliers, to manage their sales and marketing campaigns with distributors and farmers from start to finish.

Grain buyers use the platform and its services as an efficient way to source grain. Moreover, its fintech offerings across the platform—including factoring, invoice financing, and credit—make transactions more secure and efficient while reducing transactional costs and broadening access to capital for the full value chain. Leading international agriculture companies as well as more than 19,000 farmers across Europe and North America use Agro.Club services today.

Agro.Club's transaction volume grew 10x in 2020, reaching $40 million. Since raising its seed round in the beginning of last year, the startup has launched in North America and grown into a 70-person team including leaders from the fields of agriculture, digital commerce, and B2B enterprise.

The new funds will be used to expand across Western Europe and the Americas, beginning soon with a launch in Spain and the UK. It will also introduce its fintech offering—currently only available in Russia—to North American and European customers. Beyond this, Agro.Club will continue expanding its team and introducing new features to enhance its product.

Jeroen van Doornik, Managing Partner at Rabo Frontier Ventures: "Egor and the Agro.Club team have not only been able to create a very valuable product but also, based on their expertise, found the right access points to tap into this huge market. There is room for improvements in the ag sector, and the combination of Fintech/Agtech plus execution capabilities is a strong one. We are happy to be on board and look forward to the next stage."

Apostolos Apostolakis, Partner at VentureFriends, said: "The Agricultural sector urgently needs technology to improve, among other things, communication, visibility and financing for its stakeholders. We have been impressed by the passion of Egor and his team to build a product addressing those pain points. We have strong faith in their vision and capabilities and are happy to join their journey and support alongside."

Egor Kirin, Agro.Club CEO and founder, said: "We see international ag companies expanding our Commercial Effectiveness Platform into multiple countries quickly once they start experiencing the benefits of it. So our Series A comes in time to fuel our growth with a large pipeline of customers across the world. Just as importantly, the expertise of Rabo Frontier Ventures and VentureFriends in agriculture and fintech will bring a lot of value to our customers. I look forward to working with Jeroen and Apostolos as they join the Agro.Club Board."