‘Netogreen’ Secures Seed Investment from Korea Investment Accelerator ‘Bareundonghaeng 2nd Cohort’

[Netogreen Plant Factory Sales Mall Homepage (Provided by Netogreen)]

Smart agriculture startup Netogreen (CEO Hyungjun Lim) announced on the 5th that it successfully raised 300 million KRW in seed investment after being selected for the 2nd batch of the Barun Donghaeng program by Korea Investment Accelerator (KIAC) last December.

Founded in February last year, Netogreen is an agri-tech startup that implements smart agriculture beyond smart farms through big data and machine learning-based agricultural solutions.

Led by CEO Hyungjun Lim, who oversaw data agriculture at Greenlabs, a domestic agri-tech unicorn company, the startup was co-founded with Professor Taejun Lim, an expert in machine learning-based agricultural solutions serving as the chief technology officer, and experts in plant factories and smart agriculture joined as initial members.

This seed investment involved KIAC and Next Unicorn Investment Association No. 5, with a total investment amount of approximately 570 million KRW. Through this investment, Netogreen plans to recruit smart agriculture experts, commercialize plant factories, and expand its B2B business.

Korea Investment Accelerator is a startup incubation institution established by Korea Financial Group. It aims to support early-stage startups to grow into unicorns based on funds composed solely of investments from affiliates of Korea Investment Financial Group, such as Korea Investment & Securities and Korea Investment Partners.

Since launching the Barun Donghaeng 1st batch in the first half of last year, the growth program has been ongoing, and in the 2nd batch, a total of 4.4 billion KRW was invested in 24 companies including Netogreen. Netogreen will receive customized growth education programs from Korea Investment Accelerator until April this year, and discussions on follow-up investments will proceed based on evaluations after the training.

Starting January this year, Netogreen plans to open a sales mall for the commercialization of plant factories and engage in aggressive marketing. The products are mainly two types: a distribution-type plant factory that allows individual farms to easily and conveniently practice smart agriculture, and large-scale customized plant factories for enterprises.

Netogreen CEO Hyungjun Lim said, “Netogreen’s goal is to support anyone, including young people without farming experience and retirees, to successfully practice smart agriculture,” adding, “In its first year since founding, Netogreen focused on developing a distribution-type plant factory that condenses its unique experience and smart agriculture solutions. This year, we will do our best to make it the first year of exports to Southeast Asia along with the full-scale online sales of the distribution-type plant factory.”