BigSIS has closed its first external funding round, attracting investment from private angel investors and members of Cambridge Agritech. The new Board will comprise three of these investors plus the Founder and CEO, Glen Slade.
BigSIS has developed a proprietary platform to create a broad portfolio of sustainable insect control solutions for agriculture pests and mosquitoes. Using contemporary robotics and artificial intelligence, BigSIS has reinvented the Sterile Insect Technique (SIT), cutting insect costs by up to 90% to make this proven and powerful tool competitive with chemical insecticides, a £12.5bn global market in 2017.
BigSIS sterile male insects, which mate with wild females to control pest populations, are nonGM, non-toxic and are benign to other species, including pollinators and beneficial insects. Starting with codling moth, a major apple pest, and spotted wing Drosophila, a hard-to-control pest of soft fruit, BigSIS will develop, test and commercialise a series of insect control solutions for farmers and mosquito control agencies.
The new funding enables BigSIS to establish a UK laboratory and team, and prepare rapidly for first test releases of sterile male codling moths in the second half of this year.
Glen Slade, Founder and CEO, said “BigSIS’s SIT platform technology creates practical insect control solutions that deliver superior results at a lower price, and have a unique mode of action that is complementary to integrated pest management and organic-compatible.”
About BigSIS™
BigSIS™ (www.bigsis.tech) is the trading name of Zyzzle Ltd, a UK agritech venture that develops and commercialises sustainable insect control solutions for agriculture and public health using a reinvented version of the sterile insect technique (SIT), a proven, powerful and environmentally friendly tool.
About Cambridge
Agritech Cambridge Agritech (www.camagritech.com) is a consortium of some of the largest agbusinesses In the UK, investing at seed round in exciting and innovative agritech startups.