Yarta: a central platform reimagining physical commodity trading, financing and hedging in Australia and North America - Investment opportunity

Opportunity for

• Yarta is seeking an investment round of $1.5m sourced from strategic angel and venture capital investors to support the scaling of technology for Yarta platform and hardware in grains and livestock sectors in Australia and North America (Canada, US, and Mexico)
• Investors who are interested in robotics, artificial intelligence, trading, financing, and big data.
• Strategic partners across various agricultural sectors seeking an innovative trading platform to streamline trading decision-making and execution and post-trade logistics. 

Opportunity description

Industry challenge: Yarta is offering a pre-seed investment opportunity of USD$1.5 million to support the growth of its platforms and AI tools in the grains and livestock sectors in Australia and North America. This round is targeted towards angel and venture capital investors with an interest in AI, trading, financing, traceability, and big data.

The current trading process in the agricultural industry has remained unchanged for 20 years, but with the advent of big data and AI, this is set to change. Yarta has developed a central platform to empower traders, improve their key decisions, and streamline their workflow.

For the trading of most physical commodities globally, it is still an efficient and distracting process of SMS, email, phone, or even fax. Handling post-trade logistics to facilitate the movement of commodities can be a labour-intensive, error-prone, and painful process. For many, deciding when to buy or sell a commodity to optimise for price is a process that sends shivers down the back, put in the too hard basket, or completed from a subjective gut feel rather than an informed position of strength with data-backed evidence.

Yarta has developed a central platform to provide agency to the trader to streamline and improve their key decisions and workflow, bolster their bottom line, and free up their time for high-value work.

Current opportunity: Yarta is seeking USD$1.5-2m to support the development of a series of products and a go-to-market strategy in two regions where it has deep networks; Australia and North America.

Firstly, Yarta is launching an online platform for livestock trading in North America with full supply traceability using blockchain ledger technology and streamlined logistics management. Yarta counts some of North America’s largest producers of hogs and cattle as early adopters of the platform.

The roadmap features a big data and AI-driven roboadvisor to elevate traders' and farmers' decision-making to help aid their trading decisions.

Potential other applications

Yarta is exploring opportunities in the carbon offset space. This includes attaching carbon offsets to traditional commodities to make them carbon net zero. There are also emerging opportunities to use efficient technology to offer finance to farmers and trading companies that are asset-rich and cash constrained. Our vision is to democratise the global commodity trading and financing process with best-in-class technology that is supported by big data and AI. We have begun on that pathway and are eager to speak to those who are interested in partnering from a strategic development and/or investment perspective.