Agridence Transitions to Founder-Led Governance, Secures Global Investment to Accelerate Multi-Commodity Compliance Platform
SINGAPORE - Media OutReach Newswire - 13 August 2025 - Agridence Pte. Ltd. ("Agridence"), a Singapore-based technology leader in digital agri-commodity supply chains, today announced a funding round led by Cercano Management and supported by returning strategic investors EXEO Innovation Fund and Provident. This will empower Agridence to rapidly scale its multi-commodity compliance platform to help its customers by tackling industry-wide challenges such as supply chain opacity, sustainability risks, and fragmented smallholder networks.
CEO Gerald Tan, who led Agridence's development since its inception in 2018, has invested additional capital to solidify his position as founder and the single largest individual shareholder of the company. This transition from a corporate venture-built startup to a founder owned and led enterprise underscores Tan's commitment to delivering value to Agridence's customers.
"This funding marks a pivotal new chapter for Agridence. We are immensely grateful for the foundational support from our early corporate shareholders; their backing was instrumental during our startup phase and crucial in building the robust platform we have today. Now, as we mature, embracing a founder-led model is key to unlocking greater agility and neutrality. That's why this shift isn't just about capital; it's fundamentally about ownership alignment and direct accountability," said Gerald Tan, CEO and Founder of Agridence."The modular traceability infrastructure we built for natural rubber is now powering compliance for palm oil, cocoa, and beyond, proving these challenges are universal across agri-commodities, and we are now better positioned than ever to solve them."
Why This Matters: Neutrality Meets Regulatory Urgency
The shift to an independent, founder-led model provides better alignment and allows Agridence to address a critical industry need for a truly neutral technology platform that serves all stakeholders without corporate bias.
" Southeast Asia is a key source and integral region in the global agri-commodities supply chain. A platform like Agridence that applies technology while working with local stakeholders for a more transparent, sustainable, and responsible sourcing is imperative for the industry. With this additional capital and new model, we see immense potential in Agridence, especially so being independently led by a local founder who has an operating track record within the rubber sector and has a team with deep sector know-how and local knowledge," said Yu Minjie, Managing Director at Cercano Management.
From Niche to Multi-Commodity Expansion
Agridence has evolved from its roots in digitizing physical natural rubber trades to delivering a comprehensive, multi-commodity platform for global MNCs and industry associations. Recent milestones include:
Natural Rubber: The Global Platform for Sustainable Natural Rubber (GPSNR), whose members represent about 50% of the global market, uses Agridence's reporting platform for annual sustainability data submissions.
Palm Oil: Agridence powers the RSPO Certification, Trade and Traceability System (prisma), supporting RSPO Certified Palm Oil trades and Sustainable Palm Oil Credits. This initiative went live in February 2025, with nearly 20,000 users expected on the system.
Coconut: As the technology partner for the Sustainable Coconut Partnership's SCP Links platform, Agridence is simplifying sustainability reporting, digitizing audits, and increasing transparency.
Cocoa: The company is driving smallholder inclusion through mapping programs across Africa.
Interest is also growing in coffee, cashew, sugarcane, and other sectors. The new funding will accelerate Agridence's go-to-market strategy, supporting entry into new commodity verticals and geographic markets through strategic partnerships and acquisitions.
"Our biggest differentiator is our team's deep and diverse agri-commodity background," Gerald Tan added."Trust is everything in this business. By leveraging our relationships, domain expertise, and technology innovations, we deliver proven regulatory and risk frameworks that solve our customers' real pain points. We know the challenges because we've lived them and our partners trust us to solve them."
"Agridence has proven its capability to scale across multiple commodities and has earned the trust of global corporates, MNCs and industry associations. With momentum building in new commodities and geographies, the company is poised for exciting growth. We are proud to back the Agridence team as they enter this next chapter and deliver measurable impact across global supply chains," said Lim Swee Yong, CEO of EXEO Innovation Fund Management.
Hashtag: #investment #impact #globalagrisupplychains #multicommoditysolution #traceability #governance
https://agridence.com
https://www.linkedin.com/company/agridence
The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.
About Agridence
Agridence is a Singapore headquartered agri-tech platform that digitises global agri-commodity supply chains to deliver end-to-end traceability, ESG compliance, and sustainability reporting. Our cloud-native, API-ready software combines AI analytics, geospatial mapping and mobile application data capture to monitor natural rubber, palm oil, cocoa, coconut and other crops end-to-end.
Multinational companies, traders, processors and smallholders rely on Agridence to be compliant with the European Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), RSPO, GPSNR and other certification and assurance models. By embedding technology, trust and transparency at scale, we help the agri-commodity sector reduce deforestation risk and build resilient, low-carbon, socially responsible supply chains.
The Agridence ecosystem unlocks:
Real time supply chain transparency and chain-of-custody tracking
Automated environmental, social and governance (ESG) risk analysis
Smallholder onboarding and digital payment workflows
API integrations with ERP, trading and certification systems
By turning complex compliance into competitive advantage, Agridence helps enterprises de-risk sourcing, protect forests, and build a more resilient, sustainable agriculture ecosystem.
Discover our agri-commodity compliance platform at www.agridence.com, email info@agridence.com, or follow us on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/company/agridence.
About Cercano Management
Cercano Management is a multi-family office that provides investment advisory and other services to select business owners and their families, foundations, charitable organizations, and related entities. Headquartered in Bellevue, Washington, Cercano manages over US$10BN in global assets as of December 2024 across venture capital, private equity, private credit and public equity strategies. Cercano's Asia headquarters in Singapore focuses on early-stage and private investments and has invested in 30 companies in the region since its inception in July 2019.
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