AgTech startup N-Drip announces $44 million Series C for irrigation innovation

Israel-based AgTech company N-Drip, which develops irrigation technology, announced on Wednesday a $44 million Series C round. The company said that the round may be extended due to investor demand. Investors include the Liechtenstein Group, Hamilton Lane, and Natural Ventures as well as investors from previous rounds, Granot Group, Bridges Israel, Kibbutz Ein Harod Ihud, and a group of US-based investors. N-Drip has raised a total of $80 million to date and according to estimates was valued at $200 million in this round.

Full list of Israeli high-tech funding rounds in 2023

The company, co-founded by Prof. Uri Shani, Dr. Ariel Halperin and Ran Ben-Or, holds a variety of patents around the world that allow farmers to irrigate their previously flood-irrigated fields using only gravity and no external energy to either filter the water or to propel it across the field. The gravity-powered micro-irrigation system which helps farmers irrigate more precisely and efficiently, optimizing yields without requiring expensive pumps or pressure-based filters, was invented by Professor Uri Shani, Israel’s former Water Commissioner, who is also the company’s Chairman and Chief Technology Officer.

N-Drip system in action.

N-Drip, led by CEO Eran Pollak, former deputy director of Budgets at the Israel Ministry of Finance, has nearly 100 employees, and currently does business in 17 countries, with a special emphasis on the U.S., India, and Australia.

“N-Drip has enjoyed remarkable growth, with 7x growth in 2022, and more than 3x percent growth projected for this year,” said Pollak. “The current funding round will support the company’s rapid growth at the same time as a global water crisis has farmers and policymakers looking for solutions that will allow them to continue to grow food and fiber, although with less water. Farmers with farms of all sizes and in all geographies will be able to make use of our transformative technologies to help assure stability and continued farm income while also joining the worldwide effort to meaningfully reduce agricultural greenhouse gasses.”

According to the company, farmers who switch from flood irrigation to N-Drip routinely achieve water savings of 50%, yield increases of up to 33%, fertilizer reduction of 50%, and a drop in greenhouse gasses like carbon and methane from 50% to 85%.

“We are looking forward to assisting N-Drip with the global adoption of its irrigation technology, especially in rice,” said Johannes Meran, Liechtenstein Group’s CEO and Managing Partner. "N-Drip’s technology fits very well with RiceTec and its technology around direct-seeded herbicide tolerant rice. We believe that the combination of these two technologies has the power to transform the way rice is grown and substantially eliminate the negative carbon footprint of rice farming.”