Lithuanian startup Cogastro, which developed the world’s first software for the monitoring and management of an insect farm, has secured EUR 500,000 seed funding.

The funding was granted to the company by a syndicate formed by the venture capital fund CoInvest Capital and members of the Lithuanian Business Angels network (LitBAN).

“The company’s sales have grown 4 times since the beginning of this year, with the insect growing market expanding rapidly, so we also need to grow to keep up with the increasing competition. We will use the investment we have received to further develop the insect farm management software, expand the professional team and try the markets of the United States of America and Asia,“ said the head of Cogastro Mantė Šidlauskaitė.

According to Ms. Šidlauskaitė, professionals from the USA, Belgium, and France with extensive experience in the field of insect cultivation and the creation and management of their farms should soon join the startup team.

“The founders of the company have shown on several occasions that they are particularly ambitious and confident in their product, as evidenced by their performance results. We are pleased that they have managed to discover a viable niche of activity – many insect-growing farms still analyse data manually, while Cogastro provides such farms with a smart system that significantly increases productivity,” pointed out the director of CoInvest Capital Viktorija Vaitkevičienė.

“The attention of business angels has been attracted by a complex of technical and sales competencies complementary to each other by members of the Cogastro team, service contracts have been signed over several years with target customers operating on five continents around the world, which signaled good market conformity of the start-up product and an appropriate focus on maintaining and expanding customer relationships,” alleged the head of the business angels syndicate Ph.D. Audrius Dzikevičius.

In June this year, Cogastro won the Startup Pitch Battle competition, held during the international Lithuanian startup event “Startup Fair: Recharge 2021”. This enabled the startup to demonstrate its potential and attract investment – the main prize established by the event partners.

“We are delighted that after discussions with investors, Cogastro has attracted a five times bigger amount of investment – 500 000 Eur, than it was planned by partners at the beginning of the Startup Fair event. This is a great example for other startups to participate in these startup events, as they also help to raise brand awareness in the startup ecosystem and to spread the message about the startup products or services being developed,” said Roberta Rudokienė, Head of Startup Lithuania, a startup ecosystem development unit of Public Institution Enterprise Lithuania.

Cogastro’s software helps insect farms save about 60% of their time in analysing processes and the production chain and increases farm productivity by about 20%. These indicators are expected to grow as the investment attracted increases the product’s potential. Compared to other similar information technology products, the company stands out in the market with a clear specialisation and orientation towards insect-growing farms, providing insights to their owners, smart analysis of indicators, and projections.

According to Ms. Šidlauskaitė, the demand for insects for food and feed is constantly increasing, which is why a more favorable regulatory environment for this type of farm has been developed recently.

The investment in Cogastro was carried out under the financial instrument “Coinvestment Fund II financed from the European Regional Development Fund”. This measure is one of the three measures implemented by CoInvest Capital. More information on the fund is available at www.coinvest.lt.