Solasta Bio: Agritech Startup Making Insecticides Greener Raises VC Funding

“Solasta was founded on fundamental research done by our team to understand how insects survive and how we could repel certain insects without insecticides,” Shireen Davies, CEO of Solasta Bio, told Business Insider. “We developed our platform with our technology, which can use selectively targeted peptides, and we quickly moved from the lab to the field, building our team and technology over the last three years.”

Current solutions are becoming less effective as insecticide resistance increases, meaning new technologies are gaining market interest, Davies added. Solasta plans to use the funding to boost research and development as it looks to compete on price with other solutions on the market.

Dutch fund Forbion led the $14 million Series A round alongside FMC Ventures and Corteva Catalyst. Existing investors including Cavallo Ventures, Rubio Impact Ventures, Scottish Enterprise, UKi2S, SIS Ventures and the University of Glasgow also participated. This brings the total raised to date by Solasta to $19 million.

“The market wasn’t great for fundraising last year and this year was the same, but we decided to go out and do it,” Davies said. “Ultimately, we had a lot of interest from investors and the round was oversubscribed.”

The funds will be directed toward expanding the company’s presence in the U.S., improving product development and manufacturing, and overcoming various regulatory hurdles.

Check out Solasta’s 11-slide pitch deck below: