Farmnote Holdings, Inc. (hereinafter, "Farmnote"), an IoT solution provider for 
dairy and livestock farming, has procured a total of 500 million yen in funding 
from four companies ¨C Innovation Network Corporation of Japan, the National 
Federation of Agricultural Cooperative Associations (hereinafter, "ZEN-NOH"), 
the Norinchukin Bank and Sumitomo Corporation ¨C in order to strengthen its 
business, bringing the overall total of funding procured to 1.1 billion yen.

Farmnote has endeavored to expand sales and to enhance the functions of its 
pre-existing "Farmnote" cloud-based cattle management system, and develop and 
market its "Farmnote Color"; wearable device which collects real-time data of 
cattle activities. Sales have grown by nearly 30 times over the past three 
years, with the number of users rising to 1,600 farms for a contracted number 
of 160,000 heads of cattle.

Farmnote will be using this latest procurement of funds to pursue greater 
investment in R&D and to enhance its business infrastructure. This should help 
improving the productivity and competitiveness of domestic agriculture, 
inclusive of dairy and livestock farming.

Purposes of fund procurement
1. Global deployment of ICT for livestock and agricultural IT platforms through 
collaboration with Sumitomo Corporation
Sumitomo Corporation will take on the responsibility of extending "Farmnote" 
and "Farmnote Color" overseas. Farmnote will utilize Sumitomo Corporation's 
extensive overseas network to deploy Japan's highly competitive dairy and 
livestock cattle management systems to the rest of the world and thereby 
contribute to the global livestock industry. Farmnote will also look beyond 
dairy and livestock farming in working with Sumitomo Corporation to develop a 
platform for tillage that can extend agricultural ICT fostered in Japan 
globally.

2. Nationwide deployment of ICT for livestock through collaboration with 
ZEN-NOH and NTT DOCOMO
ZEN-NOH and Farmnote have concluded a capital/business tie-up for joint 
development and dissemination of system platforms and sensor devices to improve 
the incomes of farm producers through the use of ICT. A business partnership 
was also concluded recently with NTT DOCOMO, which will assist the efforts of 
ZEN-NOH and Farmnote by promoting sales.

3. Further R&D on AI and IoT applications in agriculture
Farmnote will be further promoting Farmnote Lab, its existing organization for 
researching AI and IoT applications in agriculture, extending "Farmnote 
Connect" (an integrated API for agricultural data) already in use at Farmnote 
to the wider agricultural sector beyond cattle, and constructing an integrated 
platform to optimize agriculture.

SOURCE: Sumitomo Corporation; Farmnote 

CONTACT: info@farmnote-hd.com