TartanSense, a company that develops "tiny robots for small farms," has raised $5 million in a Series A fundraising round led by FMC Ventures and Omnivore, with current investor Blume Ventures participating.

By working at the interface of robotics and AI-assisted computer vision, TartanSense adds value to the farming community. Their technologies offer a convincing alternative for cutting input costs by up to 90%.

The agritech business has now raised $7 million in total, including a $2 million seed round in March of this year.

TartanSense, founded in 2015 by Jaisimha Rao, creates small agricultural robots with artificial intelligence-assisted computer vision to help small farms cut costs and increase profits. These little robots are inexpensive, and their exact actions in all aspects of farming, from seeding to harvesting, lower cultivation expenses while increasing crop yields.

“TartanSense is helping smallholder farmers who struggle with low yields, primarily driven by two reasons: poor chemical spraying techniques and unreliable farm labour," Rao said. “TartanSense will have the world’s largest fleet of agriculture robots in the next 18 months."

India is the world's largest cotton grower, according to TartanSense, with 33 million acres under cultivation and an average weeding cost of $100 per acre. Cotton weeding alone has a market potential of more than $3 billion per year. TartanSense intends to concentrate on cotton and other crops with significant weeding costs.

“TartanSense is a pioneer in ground-based precision spraying in India. With growers’ interest in mind, it has developed a unique, low-cost precision application technology with a very high level of accuracy,” said Amar Singh, managing director at FMC Ventures.