Singapore produces less than 10% of the food it consumes and that arithmetic has always been uncomfortable. In a decade marked by climate disruption, rising costs and fragile supply chains, it has become even harder to ignore. The government’s original “30 by 30” goal, which aimed to produce 30% of Singapore’s nutritional needs locally by 2030, has since been replaced by more targeted 2035 goals for fibre and protein. But the public funding, policy attention and private capital it unlocked have already pushed the agritech ecosystem well beyond its vertical farming origins. 

We look at the top 5 startups revolutionising agritech in Southeast Asia

Increasingly, Singapore’s strongest agritech startups are not just trying to grow more food locally. They are building exportable food technologies for farms, aquaculture operators and commodity traders around the world.

Singrow

Most strawberries sold in Singapore are harvested prematurely overseas and arrive sour. Singrow, founded by NUS molecular biologist Dr Bao Shengjie, solved this by breeding a different plant entirely. Using proprietary agri-genomics technology involving genome sequencing and gene adaptation, the company developed climate-resilient strawberry varieties designed for tropical and subtropical conditions.

The technology has since scaled well beyond Singapore. Singrow now operates propagation facilities in Guangzhou and exports strawberries to Indonesia and Thailand under a contract farming model. It is also building one of Singapore’s largest circular plant factories, co-cultivating strawberries and white-button mushrooms by repurposing carbon dioxide from mushroom production as fertiliser for the berries. In August 2025, the company raised $4.5 million in Series A funding and is preparing for a Series B, with planned expansion into Saudi Arabia and Brunei.

Polybee

Polybee was built around a straightforward gap in farming. Pollination and harvest timing are two of the most crucial variables in farming and both are still done manually and inconsistently. The NUS spinout uses tiny self-recharging drones with computer vision to monitor crop health and make AI-powered yield predictions, giving farmers precise guidance on when to harvest for best quality and profit.

The same drones can pollinate self-pollinating crops like tomatoes, strawberries and blueberries using proprietary airflow-based technology, reducing reliance on manual or insect-led pollination in controlled environments. In February 2026, Polybee raised US$4.3 million in a seed round led by Paspalis Capital and elev8 VC and is targeting a five-fold expansion to over 4,000 acres by the end of the year. Its drones are already operating across seven countries, including the UK, where it is running a collaborative R&D programme with Angus Soft Fruits, one of Britain’s largest berry cooperatives.

Peptobiotics

One of aquaculture’s biggest problems is the overuse of antibiotics in shrimp farming. Bacterial infections cost the industry billions of dollars every year and the overuse of antibiotics is pushing resistant bacterial strains into the food people eat, a problem that extends well beyond the farm. Peptobiotics, founded in 2021, is working on this with recombinant antimicrobial peptides. These are proteins designed to kill harmful bacteria while reducing reliance on conventional antibiotics, which are linked to antimicrobial resistance concerns.

Co-founder and CTO Jhee Hong Koh developed a fermentation process during his NUS PhD that significantly reduced the cost of producing these proteins at scale. In April 2024, the company closed an oversubscribed US$6.2 million Series A led by Hatch Blue’s Blue Revolution Fund, with backing from SEEDS Capital, Seventure Partners, GrainCorp and Farmabase. The investor mix, spanning aquaculture, agri-inputs and animal pharma, suggests the market sees this as a platform technology rather than a niche product.

Vertical Oceans

Traditional shrimp farming happens near the coast, uses a lot of chemicals and is highly vulnerable to diseases. John Diener and Enzo Acerbi co-founded Vertical Oceans in 2020 and rebuilt it from the ground up. The company grows King Prawns in fully autonomous vertical tanks, using macroalgae and controlled systems to filter waste and keep the water clean without chemicals or antibiotics.

As the system enables same-day harvest, Vertical Oceans is able to sell fresh rather than frozen shrimp at a premium price. In April 2025, the company installed its AkuaTower and a robotic gantry at a new commercial-scale facility in Singapore. It is also building a 50-tank expansion and has its sights set on the US and European markets. Backed by Khosla Ventures in what was reportedly Silicon Valley’s first direct investment in an aquaculture startup, Vertical Oceans is making a credible case that urban seafood production is economically viable.

ProfilePrint

Many commodity transactions in the global food trade still involve physical samples being shipped back and forth before a deal closes. ProfilePrint is trying to make much of that process redundant. The company’s patented technology combines a molecular sensor with machine learning to generate a digital fingerprint of any food ingredient in under two minutes, producing quality assessments within seconds.

Founded in 2017, ProfilePrint is now deployed across nearly 50 locations on six continents and earns 90% of its revenue from international markets. Its strategic shareholders include Cargill, Olam International, Louis Dreyfus Company and Sucafina. In December 2023, it completed a Series B led by Tai Partners. In September 2024, it signed agreements with Brazil’s two largest coffee cooperatives and Instituto CNA, a government-backed institution representing Brazil’s agricultural sector, cementing its position in the world’s largest coffee export market.

What this tells us about Singapore’s agritech direction

The strongest agritech companies coming out of Singapore are increasingly infrastructure and intelligence businesses rather than food producers. They are solving problems that matter to farmers, aquaculture operators and commodity traders across the region and beyond. 

Singrow is exporting genomics expertise to China and Southeast Asia. Polybee is operating on four continents. Peptobiotics and Vertical Oceans are targeting global protein supply chains. ProfilePrint’s biggest customers are in Brazil and East Africa. Singapore is not trying to out-farm its neighbours. It is building technology that makes the way they farm better.