On April 26th 2021, Kubota Corporation and StartLife, Europe’s longest running agrifoodtech accelerator, announced their partnership to access a whole ecosystem of innovative agriculture startups to help overcome challenges facing the industry, including those emerging over the next decade and beyond.
By joining forces, the two organizations will work to identify challenges facing the agriculture sector, brainstorm new ideas and facilitate the exchange of conversation among partners in the industry. Kubota will also tap into StartLife’s ecosystem of visionary agrifoodtech startups to usher in fresh collaborations, such as pilots and proof of concept projects to deliver integrated solutions. Kubota also believes that this collaboration will generate a wide range of benefits for farmers, who are central to Kubota´s innovation efforts both now and in the future.
Kubota is StartLife’s 11th corporate partner and will help bring a wealth of expertise to its ecosystem of startup members. Due to Kubota’s global footprint, StartLife also sees the collaboration as an opportunity to strengthen its presence outside the Netherlands, expanding its horizons across the world.
For both Jan Meiling, managing director of StartLife, and Peter van der Vlugt, General Manager of Kubota Innovation Center Europe, the partnership was a logical step, since both parties recently moved into the same office building on Wageningen Campus.
Daria Batukhtina, Business Development Manager at Kubota Group Innovation Center Europe, comments: “As our neighbours in the FoodValley cluster, it would have been a missed opportunity for us not to partner with StartLife, who we deem a very important facilitator in the agriculture ecosystem. We also believe they encompass the entrepreneurial spirit needed to face the challenges of the future.”
“The partnership was the next logical step for us in achieving our goal to accomplish activities with early-stage startups and open the door for new collaborations, such as pilots or proof of concept projects. We look forward to beginning this journey with StartLife.”
Global Partnerships Manager at StartLife, Caroline Bijkerk, comments: “It is fantastic to have a new corporate partner in our community, especially a company so very well established in corporate startup engagement such as Kubota.”
“We at StartLife already have a very clear strategy of how to move forward with Kubota and we eagerly anticipate working together in the future.”
About StartLife
StartLife is Europe’s longest running and leading agrifoodtech accelerator. Its mission is to accelerate agrifoodtech startups shaping a sustainable food system. They provide business development support, mentoring, non-dilutive funding and access to a global community of startups, investors, corporates and experts. Since 2010, the accelerator, which was co-founded by Wageningen University & Research, has supported over 300 agrifoodtech startups that have raised over €180 million in follow-on capital.
