Best Startup
At Best Startup UK we track over 130,000 UK startups and over 500,000 people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.
This list showcases the top United Kingdom based Founder operating in the AgTech space. If you think a Founder is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on editor@beststartup.co.uk.
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Companies House UK, Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
Somdip Dey
Founder & CEO of Nosh Technologies
Somdip Dey, also professionally known as InteliDey, is an Embedded Artificial Intelligence scientist, engineer, entrepreneur, AI art & music creator and TED speaker. Dey is the CEO of Nosh Technologies. Born on December 13, 1990, in Kolkata, India, Somdip Dey is the only child of a painter mother, Soma Dey, and a commercial artist father, Sudip Dey. Dey attended South Point High School in Kolkata, India and went to study bachelor’s in Computer Science at St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata, where he graduated with a first-class degree. Throughout his schooling, Dey had a passion for visual arts and theatre. After graduating with a Computer Science degree Dey pursued a career of an engineer, a scientist and an entrepreneur. In 2012, Dey invented a digital QR authentication system that was adopted by institutes around the world to stop the generation of fake degree certificates. In 2013, he moved to the U.K. to pursue master’s study and while pursuing his MSc at the University of Manchester in 2014, his parents had a car accident that made him the family’s sole breadwinner. Sending money to his family to support them left Somdip with an empty bank account and he was left to collect food waste from dumpsters. This led him to co-found Codeepy, a start-up committed to co-developing the world’s first crowd food-sharing platform. It won the 3Scale API Award at the Koding’s 2014 Global Hackathon & inspired entrepreneurs to develop similar solutions. In 2020, Dey co-founded Nosh Technologies, which developed an AI-powered food management app to reduce food waste in the household, and Dey also assumed the role of CEO of the company. Dey is also a TEDx speaker. In regard to visual arts and theatre, Dey made his first debut in the documentary, “Unity” (2020), talking about his experience of the COVID-19 pandemic. Dey produces music using AI algorithms and releases them under the stagename InteliDey.
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About Extreme AIM Records, Nosh Technologies, ReMe Basket Ltd., University of Essex: Nosh Technologies operates as a deep tech company that develops applications to optimize food management and food waste at home.
Benjamin Belldegrun
Founder & Managing Partner of Pontifax AgTech
Benjamin Belldegrun is co-founder and managing partner at Pontifax AgTech.
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About Pontifax AgTech: Pontifax AgTech is a pioneering growth capital investor in food and agriculture technology.
Kenny Ewan
CEO & Founder of Wefarm
Kenny Ewan is originally from Scotland and he studied architecture at Dundee University, before moving to Peru to work for an international NGO for seven years. While he was in Peru he worked closely with local farmers and indigenous communities on sustainable agriculture projects,where he learned about the power of grassroots innovation. After his time in Peru he joined Cafedirect Producers Foundation, an independent UK charity that works with a network of more than 280,000 smallholder farmers. As part of their start-up team he led the development of WeFarm from 2010 to 2014, before launching it as an independent social enterprise in 2015. WeFarm connects smallholder farmers in Africa and Latin America to vital information on agriculture via SMS. Farmers can ask questions on farming and receive crowdsourced answers from farmers around the world on even the most basic mobile phone, without having internet access or leaving their farm. In November 2015 we have 32,000 farmers using our system.
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About Wefarm: Wefarm is a farmer-to-farmer digital network that enables users to share information via SMS.
Keiran Olivares Whitaker
Founder & CEO of Entocycle
Environmental engineer, YC alumni, five years expertise in rearing insects, passionate environmentalist, deep sea diver.
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About Entocycle: Entocycle’s automated insect farm produces environmentally friendly insect protein to feed farmed animals.
Kizito Okelue
CEO & Founder of KODGAV
Kizito is the Founder of KODGAV. Before structuring KODGAV as limited liability company in October 2019, he worked as a sole proprietor developing business strategies. Beyond being an Entrepreneur he’s a fitness avid and creative.
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About KODGAV, KODGAV UK: Agtech platform creating new data driven food systems by integrating African smallholder farmers into a global supply chain.
John Matcham
Founder – International Business Development Director of Greengage Lighting
John Matcham is the Technical Director and Product Development at Light Science Technologies. Science and Food Technology Development
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About Greengage Lighting, Light Science Technologies: Agri-Tech company providing LED lighting induction systems.
Ben Scott-Robinson
Co-Founder and CEO of The Small Robot Company
Ben is the founder of The Small Robot Company. We have a mission to help farmers feed the world while regenerating the planet. We call this the Fourth Agricultural Revolution. Our service of robots, are called Tom Dick and Harry, and the brains of the operation, Wilma. Previously he ran Ordnance Survey’s internal agency creating beautiful products and campaigns with the world’s best maps. Before that, Ben started many startups, and worked as Creative and Experience Director at Top 10 digital agencies such as Digitas and Sapient.
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About The Small Robot Company: The Small Robot Company is delivering per plant farming for the world’s largest crops.
Sam Watson Jones
Co-Founder and President of The Small Robot Company
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About The Small Robot Company: The Small Robot Company is delivering per plant farming for the world’s largest crops.
Matija Zulj
Founder and Chief Executive Officer of AGRIVI
Matija is the founder and CEO of Agrivi. Matija believes that if we provide knowledge and technology to all food producers, we can provide enough food for everyone and keep agriculture sustainable. He holds an MSc in computer science and an MBA. Agrivi is an agri-tech startup that is creating the global agricultural eco-system with vision to change the way food is produced. With an intelligent cloud farm management solution, we help farmers to increase their productivity and find buyers for produced food. Agrivi is the winner of World Startup Competition 2014
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About AGRIVI: AGRIVI is a global agritech company with the market leading farm management software
Nicole Junkermann
Founder of NJF Capital
Nicole Junkermann is the Founder at NJF Capital.
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About Creative Destruction Lab (CDL), NJF Capital, Owkin, Shanghai Really Sports Equipment: NJF Capital is an investment firm that has supported innovative technology-based businesses across the world.
Rob Ward
CEO & Founder of Forward Food
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About Forward Food, Grocery Accelerator: Forward Food working with AgTech and FoodTech businesses that provide access to commercial support with investment.
Andrew Huxham
Founder of Hectare Agritech
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About Hectare Agritech: Hectare is an agritech company focused on exploiting current inefficiencies and deficiencies in the farming industry supply chains.
Charlie Guy
Founder and Chief Executive Officer of LettUs Grow
Charlie Guy is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer at LettUs Grow.
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About LettUs Grow: LettUs Grow design aeroponic irrigation and control technology for vertical farms.
Ben Crowther
Co-Founder & CTO of LettUs Grow
Ben Crowther is the Chief Technical Officer and Founder at LettUs Grow.
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About LettUs Grow: LettUs Grow design aeroponic irrigation and control technology for vertical farms.
Jack Farmer
Chief Scientific Officer and Founder of LettUs Grow
Jack Farmer is the Chief Scientific Officer and Founder at LettUs Grow.
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About LettUs Grow: LettUs Grow design aeroponic irrigation and control technology for vertical farms.
Anders Gundersen
CEO & Founder of Sensonomic
Anders has experience from C-level strategy consulting, academia and the finance industry. He has been project lead on multiple projects in Scandinavia, UK and East Africa. Realising that land management issues are inherently complex, and that decisions affecting people, nature and businesses are often made with too little information, he founded Sensonomic to provide better data for decision making and risk management. Anders holds an MBA from the University of Oxford and an MPhil in Economics from the University of Bergen.
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About Sensonomic: Sensonomic creates computer simulations of agricultural systems to optimise yield, improve operations and increase resilience.
Tashia Tucker
Co-Founder & CEO of Olombria
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About Olombria: Olombria is an agricultural technology that curates fly behaviour, to increase pollination and ensure greater crop yields.
Alex Fisher
Founder & CEO of Saturn Bioponics
Alex has driven the Saturn Grower technology from initial experiments through to market ready product over the last 7 years. He has significant experience in all aspects of the technology and its application in the commercial growing market place. He is working with some of the UK’s leading horticultural crop growers, processors, industry figures and researchers, as well as with commercial partners in international markets. Alex has overall responsibility for the direction of the company but remains involved with all customers at both sales and support levels.
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About Saturn Bioponics: Saturn Bioponics provides crop production systems to improve profitability by increasing yields and reducing labour and resource costs.
Luke Parkin
COO & Co-Founder of Phytoponics
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About Phytoponics: Phytoponics designs and manufactures Deep Water Culture (DWC) hydroponic growing systems for supply to commercial produce growers.
Adam Dixon
CEO & Co-Founder of Phytoponics
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About Human Alchemy, Phytoponics: Phytoponics designs and manufactures Deep Water Culture (DWC) hydroponic growing systems for supply to commercial produce growers.
Damien Kennedy
Founder of Wheyhey
Damien Kennedy is the Founder of Wheyhey.
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About Wheyhey: Wheyhey is a London based health food brand.
Oliver Hilbourne
Founder and Director of Outfield
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About Outfield: Bringing the future to fruit farming
Charlie Curtis
Founder of DryGro
Charlie Curtis is the Founder of DryGro.
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About DryGro: DryGro is an agriculture technology company that grows animal feed crops on arid, otherwise unproductive land.
Richard Hobson
CEO and Founder of Herdsy
Richard Hobson holds a B.A. in Finance & DBS(IT) from the Michael Smurfit School of Business. He has a diverse skillset as he is both a Software Developer and an Accountant who has worked in these roles for IBM and Aviva. Under Richard’s leadership, Herdsy has grown from a kitchen table business to one that has won international awards and was a finalist in 2018 for Cambridge Agtech Company of the year.
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About Herdsy: Herdsy automates and analyses farm animal data and converts it into valuable profit decisions for farmers.
