Building next generation infrastructure for the future of food security — why we invested into Vosbor
At Market One Capital we’ve been big believers in B2B marketplaces for several years already. Agriculture has been one of the least digitally advanced industries which is a testament for disruption potential. That’s also why we are happy to meet with agritech digital platforms and eagerly jumped on an opportunity to talk to Maarten from Vosbor.
Agricultural commodity trade is crucial from a global food security perspective. There are countries generating major surpluses of wheat, corn, soybean and other key commodities and countries that are 100% dependent on imports of these. The global food and agriculture trade is in the trillions of USD every year and growing. Moreover, climate change and other geopolitical events like recent Russia’s barbaric invasion on Ukraine bring increasing instability to the sector.
As we’ve learned, at its core, the industry offers a classical B2B marketplaces disruption case where transactions are executed largely offline and using archaic methods (phone, lengthy e-mail exchanges etc). A trade can involve 10–15 participants and ~30 people. Post-trade processing can last 60 days or more, which creates significant cost, especially given that the usual trading unit is a Panamax Vessel. What is more, there are further pain points and inefficiencies on the market, including: large compliance costs, ineffective hedging, trade finance gap and more.
Vosbor created an independent digital platform which enables efficient, secure and convenient trading and execution (covering any origin and destination worldwide), simplifies risk management and compliance, and increases data accessibility. The platform is currently piloted by 35 of the globally leading companies in the agricultural commodity trade. They are also on their way to expand the limited hedging opportunities offered by introducing new, better correlating derivative products.
For us Vosbor was an exceptional case of Founder-Market Fit. Maarten was trading grain himself for several years and saw the opportunity firsthand. He has been building an outstanding team, bringing in top talent from across the globe, both on product & tech as well as industry & commercial side of things.
We decided to lead Vosbor’s first external round of investment last year, invited some other investors and Maarten convinced our colleagues from 7percent Ventures, FJ Labs, Athos Capital and Nucleus Capital to join the round. The company made significant progress on product and business development side of things since then and we’re thrilled that they’ve just announced a new $7 million seed round. The round was led by Lux Capital and industry heavyweights Chris Mahoney, former CEO of Glencore Agriculture, and Soren Schroder, former CEO of Bunge, are co-investing and have joined the company’s team.
Vosbor is hiring across a number of positions — if the company’s mission resonates with you and you’re interested in joining them, feel free to reach out here: https://www.vosbor.com/careers
