SUNNYVALE, CALIFORNIA, U.S.  — TeleSense, an IoT technology innovator working to provide solutions to improve food safety and grain storage, has closed a $10.2 million Series B round of financing.

The financing was led by existing investor Finistere Ventures, an ag and food investment pioneer. Fulcrum Global Capital (FGC), UPL Ltd., Artesian and Mindset Ventures, as well as existing investors such as Rabobank’s Food & Agri Innovation Fund also joined the round.

“The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the inefficiencies of our global food supply chain and accelerated the digitizing of it,” said Spencer Maughan, co-founder and partner, Finistere Ventures. “Having led both the Series A and Series B investments, we believe strongly that TeleSense is a prime visionary in redefining how grain is stored, handled and traded. Ultimately, TeleSense is creating a digital global grain supply chain that uses data to combat grain spoilage — making the supply chain more sustainable and saving companies billions of dollars in lost grain along the way.”

In addition to new funding Telesense added two new board members, Soren Wolck Schroder, former chief executive officer (CEO) of Bunge, and Mark Palmquist, CEO of United Malt and former CEO of GrainCorp.

Schroder and Palmquist will actively support the company’s growth plan by sharing their extensive expertise and making connections throughout their global grain networks.

“A grain monitoring pioneer, TeleSense brings the advances of artificial intelligence and predictive analytics to the grain industry and provides the data-driven actionable insights needed to improve post-harvest grain management decisions that can have tremendous impact on supply chain economics,” Palmquist said. “The grain industry is striving to use data to drive decision automation, but it can be a costly and time-intensive endeavor. TeleSense offers an approach that is practical, useful and delivers immediate value — making the promise of data-driven decisions readily available for the grain industry at large.”

The company recently established offices in Australia and Europe, to focus on strengthening its global sales channel, speeding production and further building out its data science team to maintain its position as an artificial intelligence (AI) leader in the grain industry.

“Having spent more than 30 years in the grain industry, I am very impressed by TeleSense’s use of smart analytics and prescriptive actions to not only preserve quality, but also to optimize merchandising decisions for maximum profitability,” Schroder said. “Like with any business, success in the grain industry is all about what you know, when you know it, and how to take action on that knowledge. TeleSense enables higher quality decision making at a very competitive price.”

TeleSense is digitizing the post-harvest grain supply chain. Utilizing IoT, real-time environmental monitoring, and cloud-based AI technology, TeleSense provides grain managers with insights about their stored grain, so that they can make storage decisions easily, quickly and accurately. The company’s sensors and app work together to continuously monitor grain and automatically send issue alerts to users, mitigating spoilage, infestation and grain quality degradation. TeleSense also retrofits traditional temperature cable systems to integrate them with its fully wireless software ecosystem.

“The complexities of the food supply chain continue to evolve, and the grain industry needs to keep pace,” said Naeem Zafar, co-founder and CEO of Telesense. “The ability to know real-time storage conditions, accurately predict future grain quality and optimize merchandising timing delivers higher profits. We are dedicated to bringing the power of data to the grain industry and helping grain growers and handlers improve their financial outcomes. We’re excited to work with our investors to build on our successes with grain majors and make TeleSense products the standard for the global grain industry.”