Agricultural drone manufacturer EAVision Technologies said on Tuesday that it raised USD 30 million in a Series C round led by Singapore’s state fund Temasek, China’s CITIC, and agritech-focused VC Bits x Bites. Existing investors include Germany’s BASF and Chinese food retailer Pagoda.
EAVision’s drones are equipped with stereo vision sensors that make them suitable to fly in challenging environments. In China, mountainous farming in areas full of vegetation with varied heights increases the risk of drones crashing into bushes and trees. These areas account for more than 34% of the country’s cultivated land, said the company. The drone contains a mist sprinkler that allows it to fly as close as one meter to vegetation.
The company, which was founded in 2015 by Xuesong Dong and Wang Xinyu, said that it increased working speed at a Southwest Chinese sugarcane farm by 50x. In a citrus farm in the Guangxi province, it has shown significant improvements in preventing spider mites.
China is the second largest drone market in the world, and there are ambitious plans for the drone industry. UAVs have been utilized in multiple sectors, such as agriculture, logistics, and mobility. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs defined the size of the smart agriculture market at RMB 200 billion (USD 30.4 billion) in 2020.
Competitors in the agricultural drone sector include Guangzhou-based XAG, or XAircraft, which raised USD 182 million at the end of last year.