SAN FRANCISCO & NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Rabobank and RocketSpace have selected 14 startups across the food and agriculture industries to participate in Terra’s inaugural cohort. Terra is a first of its kind accelerator program bringing together the industry’s most disruptive startups and progressive corporations to fuel cross-industry innovation and set a new standard for food and agriculture. The cohort, which begins today at RocketSpace’s tech campus in San Francisco, includes participants representing five countries – Canada, Spain, Thailand, United Kingdom, and USA.
Terra’s unique consortium model brings together a diverse group of new, innovative companies with established industry leaders to explore and experiment with potential partnerships with Terra’s collaborators through a dedicated product validation program. Terra’s founders, Rabobank and RocketSpace, along with Terra’s corporate collaborators – AgroFresh, Beta San Miguel, Givaudan, Griffith Foods, Grupo Azucarero Mexico/CULTIBA and OSI Group – selected the cohort from a competitive applicant pool of hundreds of startups from around the world. In addition to the potential for new product creation, those selected to join Terra have the potential to disrupt the industry as a whole, addressing emerging opportunities from alternative protein sources to food safety innovations to soil diagnostics.
Terra’s inaugural cohort of startups includes: Arc-net (Belfast, UK), Aromyx (Palo Alto, CA, USA), Biomarker.io (San Francisco, CA, USA), Blue Prairie Brands (Scottsbluff, NE, USA), Brio Agtech (Fresno, CA, USA), Chinova Bioworks (Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada), Clear Labs (Menlo Park, CA, USA), JuiceInnov8 (Bangkok, Thailand), H2HYDROPONICS (Nigran, Pontevedra, Spain), ImpactVision (Mountain View, CA), Kuli Kuli (Oakland, CA, USA), mOasis (Union City, CA, USA), Ripe.io (Summit, NJ, USA) and Trace Genomics (San Francisco, CA, USA).
“There are many unique attributes that set Terra apart from other accelerators, one being that the pilot program will allow us to really observe how the participating start-ups can scale, and how the partnership with our collaborators can help them in that process,” says Manuel Gonzalez, Head of Startup Innovation at Rabobank. “Terra is about both the future and the here and now – what the industry needs, what consumers want, what the earth requires – and how startups can respond to the needs of society.”
Beginning today, the 14 startups will embark on an eight-week tailored curriculum led by industry experts, followed by an eight-week product validation period. During the program, the participating companies will have the exclusive opportunity to work from RocketSpace’s tech campus in downtown San Francisco, among its curated community of tech startups, which has included 18 “unicorns” valued at $1B or more.
“This group of startups has the potential to define the future of food and agriculture and it’s our goal to provide the velocity – speed and direction – to help them scale their solutions,” said Ron Yerkes, vice-president of Industry Tech Accelerators at RocketSpace. “It’s going to be an exciting adventure working directly with some of the world’s most progressive corporations.”
For more information about the 14 companies selected for the first Terra cohort, please visit the Terra Accelerator website.
About Rabobank
Rabobank Group is a global financial services leader providing wholesale and retail banking, leasing, and real estate services in more than 40 countries worldwide. Founded over a century ago, Rabobank today is one of the world’s largest banks with over $750 billion in assets. In the Americas, Rabobank is a premier bank to the food, agribusiness and beverage industry, providing sector expertise, strategic counsel and tailored financial solutions to clients across the entire food value chain. Additional information is available on our Rabobank North America Wholesale website or on our social media platforms, including Twitter and LinkedIn.
About RocketSpace
RocketSpace is a global ecosystem of people and ideas that provides the necessary velocity — both speed and direction — to help the world’s top innovators bring the future to market. Founded in San Francisco in 2011, its global network of technology campuses and services are designed to help tech startups scale. RocketSpace’s Corporate Innovation Services team helps fuel global brands’ innovation programs by tapping into its ecosystem of startups from around the world. For more information, visit RocketSpace.com, as well as the RocketSpace on Twitter and LinkedIn.
