Rantizo Raises More than $6 million to Scale Automation Orchestration
Rantizo Raises More than $6 million to Scale Automation Orchestration
An exclusive look at Rantizo's freshly raised capital, a new strategy and a growing area of interest for farmers and the industry.
Key Takeaways
Rantizo raised more than $6 million to scale their leading operator network for spray drone services.
Rantizo connects demand and supply for agricultural spray drone services by selling drones, support, software and training to ag retailers and spray drone operators, and by flying contracted acres for spraying services. Rantizo provides a service platform that can deliver new revenue for ag retailers and seeks to automate spray service delivery.
The future of Rantizo is unlikely to stop at a focus on drones— the future could be the enablement of novel services and business models along with being an orchestrator for the entirety of services and autonomy in agriculture.
Upstream Ag Insights Exclusive on More than $6 million Funding Raise
Rantizo, the leading operator network for spray drone services, announced today an expansion of its oversubscribed funding round. Led by Leaps by Bayer, with Fulcrum Global Capital and Innova Memphis, this round will allow the new executive team to lean into a new growth strategy for Rantizo
A company raising capital at any time is noteworthy. Given the macroeconomic environment and the investors, it is especially notable.
Leaps, being the corporate venture capital arm of Bayer, furthering their investment and Fulcrum Global Capital, being an innovative investment group that has a notable portfolio of drone spraying company Precision.ai and automation company Sabanto.
When I had a conversation with Rantizo about the raise and their new focus in the market, I was enthralled by the evolution of the business:
“Our vision is to build a service network that puts autonomy to work in ag, starting with spray drone services. We are excited to expand our nationwide operator network, deploy our work management and as-applied map software, and continue our exponential growth in acres treated,” said CEO Mariah Scott.
Given this new vision, I wanted to dive deeper into what Rantizo is working toward, how they might spend their new capital raise and look at their business.
In the early days of Upstream Ag Insights, I wrote about my newfound bullishness for drones. Since 2020, even more potential in drones has emerged, as a point of not only data acquisition but also product application— whether crop protection, crop nutrition or planting cover crops, including announcements from the likes of Guardian Ag.
With notable application challenges with large ground sprayer such as compaction, crop trample, expense and inefficiency that can arise in tough-to-get-to areas of fields, geographies or weather conditions, we can see the opportunity for drone spray application services.
The increasing interest in drones for data acquisition and spray application shines through in the number of drones being flown as well. At the end of 2022, there were over 200,000 DJI units alone being used within agriculture on a cumulative area of more than 200 million hectares globally, according to a recent DJI report:
This growth has led to an increase in demand for two things:
Skilled and accredited drone pilots
Software to orchestrate work orders, data and operator acre access.
This is where Rantizo comes in.
Who is Rantizo?
Rantizo was founded in 2018 with the original business plan to build sprayer upgrade kits for drones that utilized electrostatic technology to precisely deliver cartridge-dispensed agrichemicals when and where they are needed.
In 2019, Rantizo became the first company licensed by the FAA to provide drone spraying services in 10 states.
In 2020, the company further diversified its offerings. The Rantizo Fly & Apply platform included a DJI drone, sprayer upgrade kit, Mix & Fill tendering station, Rantizo App and trailer. Rantizo also performed services for its Contractors, handling all the billing, insurance and support needs as well as training.
In 2022, the decision was made to exit the custom hardware lines of business (sprayer upgrade kit, tendering station, trailer).
Efforts were made to focus on compliance services, support and training, packaged with DJI drones, and to sell to large ag retailers who planned to offer spray services.
Mariah Scott joined as CEO in late February 2023, and has focused the company on building an operator network, developing software to automate the workflow of finding, fulfilling and verifying a spray job, and leveraging the contracted acres model to build a two-sided marketplace connecting demand and supply for spray drone services.
Why Drone Services and Spray Applications?
High-clearance ground sprayers are incredible tools for farmers— they are crucial to enabling improved yield and quality for farmers across North America.
However, there are shortcomings of ground rigs— they include:
expensive to purchase and operate
cause crop trample and soil compaction
large leading to challenges in tighter or smaller field areas (eg: around power lines or terraced land)
lose efficiency for spot spray applications (eg: nutrient deficiency management)
cannot be used when soil is too wet
Aerial applicators are great tools too, but they have drift and safety concerns.
These short comings aren’t to say ground sprayers are going anywhere (they aren’t), but it illustrates why there is an opening for drone application.
Drone applicators can overcome all of these struggles.
Drones are still imperfect though too— many crop protection products are not optimized for such low water volumes, there are regulations challenges and the biggest one, their hourly acre capacity is in the 40ac/hr range and on average are in the ~25ac range (for a singular DJI unit) while ground rigs are anywhere from 60-100ac (depending on geography, water volume etc). This is one of the largest challenges to overcome, along with cost.
However, all of these are being worked on via advancing regulations around swarming, battery technology (and more) and because of the alluded challenges in ground sprayer usage, there is momentum for drones to grow.
The Rantizo Differentiator
Rantizo was a seller of hardware.
They are now working to become not only an enabler of drone application but an orchestrator of a two-sided marketplace.
Rantizo is building the necessary infrastructure to orchestrate and optimize the delivery of drone services to farms across the United States.
Rantizo creates and connects demand for acres to be sprayed by drone to a network supply of agricultural spray drone service providers while streamlining the data flow: