Through its plug-and-play, predictive analytics platform, Ukko aims to help farmers and other agriculture sector players determine when to apply water, nutrients, and pesticides to certain crops and geographies by leveraging IoT tech, machine learning, and data science. Founded in 2017 by CEO Ketan Kaushish and CTO Avi Bhargava, Ukko Agro claims it has developed the capacity to rapidly build predictive models, in house, for disease, insect, crop growth, and irrigation forecasting. Kaushish told BetaKit that Ukko Agro raised this funding to accomplish a few main goals: broaden its reach with new and existing customers; improve its data science capabilities; add more crops and geographies; and build more integrations with other agriculture platforms. The more than 10-year-old Semios offers an IoT network of sensors for farmers that monitor and predict insect, disease, water, and the frost risk faced by crops, and raised $100 million CAD in September to support its acquisition-focused growth strategy. According to Bradshaw, “the development and practical use of predictive analytics to support decision-making in agriculture is a gap in the digital ag market.” Kaushish described Ukko’s plug-and-play approach as a key differentiator from its competitors, adding that there are a lot of existing platforms that help farmers record data.