You wouldn’t ordinarily expect a telecoms CVC like Telus Ventures to be especially active in agricultural technology, but then most of them don’t have a sector expert like Tanmay Bhargava on staff.
The self-described physics nerd runs the unit’s agtech practice, an area introduced after Telus began offering digital technology to agribusinesses.
Bhargava spent four years investing in underrepresented areas of the US for Community Development Venture Capital Alliance and launched an Indian micro fund, back when cash for agtech startups was hard to come by in the country, then moved on to agricultural AI startup Intello Labs. Corporate VC has proven a refreshing change in speed.
“I spent a lot of time raising money, and as a corporate venture capitalist it’s nice to have a ready pool of money to deploy.”
“I spent a lot of time raising money, and as a corporate venture capitalist it’s nice to have a ready pool of money to deploy,” he says. “It’s exciting that you don’t have to keep going out raising money because you have a ready pool of capital allocated to you and you just need to find nice companies that are strategically aligned to the corporate’s strategic needs.”
His experience has given Bhargava a handle on what Telus may want in future as well as an extensive network in North America. The next step will be to branch out into more regions, like Europe, Asia and Australia. The existential need of farming combined with its environmental impact means agtech can’t just be local.
“This sector feeds the world,” Bhargava says. “It’s very important to food security, especially in the future when there will be more disruption to supply chains and more climate anomalies, and agricultural yields will be under pressure.
“That’s when what I do becomes ever more important, because we will need to constantly come up with new technologies to understand those erratic weather patterns, uncertain supply chains and so on – on top of a growing world population.”
https://globalventuring.com/corporate/publication/rising-stars-2024/