Beanstalk AgTech launches Monsoon Ventures for Southeast Asian agtech push

Photo: Beanstalk AgTech

Announced on August 11, the Singapore-based studio is backed by Enterprise Singapore (EnterpriseSG) and Rabo Foundation and will support founders from across the region to improve smallholder farmer livelihoods, environmental outcomes, and food security.

Monsoon Ventures will initially focus on six priority markets – Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines and Singapore – with an initial investment of $940,000. The studio is targeting up to eight ventures in its first two years of operation, with plans to attract and deploy significantly more capital and build over 30 scalable ventures within five years.

‍An estimated 100 million smallholders across Southeast Asia are the backbone of regional food production, facing mounting pressure from climate shocks, input cost volatility, and supply chain fragmentation. The most practical near-term lever to improve smallholder resilience is validated technology reaching them at scale. These technologies exist across Southeast Asia, but rarely make it to market due to a lack of commercial translation infrastructure.

‍Monsoon Ventures has been founded by Beanstalk specifically to address this commercialisation gap in Southeast Asia. The studio will invest capital, recruit complementary commercial expertise, map value chain pathways, and help ventures engage with the right investors or strategic partnerships with regional players.

‍After running the agtech-focused Drought Venture Studio in Australia and working across Southeast Asia’s innovation ecosystem for eight years, Monsoon Ventures is Beanstalk’s first venture studio in Southeast Asia.

"In the last two years, Beanstalk's Australian venture studio helped innovators raise over $14.3 million and launch 15 commercial products," said Justin Ahmed, director of Beanstalk AgTech. "In Southeast Asia, the challenges facing science commercialisation are even more magnified, which is precisely why we're launching Monsoon Ventures here."

"Scientific innovations in smallholder resilience in this region so often die between proof-of-concept and commercial launch," Ahmed added. "Monsoon Ventures will bring the strategy, team, and capital to help innovation cross this chasm and reach the smallholders who need it."

‍Supported by EnterpriseSG and Rabo Foundation, Monsoon Ventures will draw on a blended finance model of philanthropic, public, and private capital that is suited to support both impact and commercial success outcomes. EnterpriseSG has provided foundational support for the studio to develop targeted solutions that can address the region’s food resilience challenges. Meanwhile, Rabo Foundation have further provided catalytic capital to support Monsoon Ventures’ mission to improve smallholder resilience.

Over the last eight years, Beanstalk AgTech has worked across the Asia-Pacific agrifood ecosystem, from Vietnam to Indonesia to Australia, helping researchers, founders, and agribusinesses turn promising science into products that reach farmers.

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