Kieran Gartlan (pictured), a senior director of Latin America business development at exchange operator CME Group, has joined early-stage agricultural technology accelerator The Yield Lab as a Brazil-based managing director.
Gartlan, who had been based in Brazil for more than two decades prior to a brief US-based spell from 2016, will oversee The Yield Lab’s activities in the country, including raising venture capital funds and generating dealflow in Brazil’s agtech ecosystem.
Gartlan told Global Corporate Venturing: “I joined CME Group in 2010 and was part of the team that established the company’s first presence in Brazil. My main responsibilities included business development and sales and I was able to help grow the company’s business more than ten-fold over the past eight years.
“In 2016, I moved to Chicago to work on a project for CME Group to become involved in the physical grains market space, which is still in development.”
Formed in 2014, Yield Lab is headquartered in the US state of Missouri and expanded into Europe by setting up an Ireland-based subsidiary in April 2017. It began operating in Latin America by launching an Argentina-based program later that year.
Cloud-based commodities trading platform Agree Market, irrigation management system developer Kilimo, agricultural image processing technology developer Eiwa and agricultural management platform S4Agtech, have each received $100,000 through the Argentinian initiative.
Gartlan told GCV: “I am very excited to be joining The Yield Lab and returning to Brazil to open the company’s office there. My main responsibilities will be to raise capital for the Yield Lab’s [Latin American] accelerator and venture capital funds and to invest in early-stage agrifood tech companies.
“Brazil is one of the largest agricultural exporters in the world but has a number of challenges including market access, logistics, access to credit, storage space and many others. Despite all these difficulties, the country’s agricultural sector continues to expand at an explosive rate.”
Yield Lab launched its most recent Singapore-based scheme last month, broadening its investment coverage to the Asia-Pacific region in the process.
– Photo courtesy of The Yield Lab
