AgShift raises $2 million from Exfinity Ventures

AgShift, a California-based technology start-up, has raised $2 million in funding from Exfinity Ventures.

The start-up is in the process of building what it claims to be the world’s first autonomous food inspection system using machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques to reduce global food waste.

This is the seed round of funding, which will be used to strengthen product development and expand customer reach, according to company executives.

Food inspection system

“The current food inspection processes are paper-based and tedious, needing continuous personal training. Inconsistent and subjective inspections result in a loss of $15.6 billion a year for the organisations responsible - not counting the millions of dollars in recovery costs and claim management,” said Miku Jha, Founder & CEO, AgShift, who in her earlier avatar launched companies and sold them to giants like IBM.

“Our goal is to standardise food inspection across the entire supply chain and reduce food wastage resulting from inconsistencies in food quality interpretation,” she added.

In other words, AgShift is trying to digitalise the process of food inspection across various touch points. After digitalising, AgShift can use machine learning algorithms to automatically inspect the produce and commodities for any defects.

These quality assessments are made as per US FDA standards or as per a company's own standards. “Our patented methodology uses image recognition techniques, by which we can detect the quality of produce as well as predict its quality,” said Jha.

AgShift is aiming to reduce 1.3 billion tons of annual food loss and waste.

For Exfinity Ventures, which counts partners such as TV Mohandas Pai, V Balakrishnan, amongst others, this is the first investment in the agri-tech space.

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