“We want to maximize value for farmers—environmentally, economically, and socially”

Elaniti co-founders Scott Jarrett and Utkarsh Vaidya share a deep commitment to solving real-world challenges in agriculture. Their big-data-driven microbial platform helps farmers to predict, explain, and adapt to variance in crop performance. Selected as the latest addition to the biotope portfolio, Elaniti is ready to drive efficiency and sustainability in agriculture. 

Scott Jarrett and Utkarsh Vaidya first met at Carbon13’s Cambridge Venture Builder, a program designed to connect co-founders from diverse backgrounds to build startups that create a positive climate impact.

Jarrett has a background in management consulting, organizational design, and commercial strategy, with experience in life sciences, sustainable logistics, and climate-focused venture building. Vaidya is a computer scientist who previously designed and scaled SaaS AI healthcare solutions. Despite their diverse backgrounds, they both share deep-rooted personal connections to agriculture and a strong drive to make a tangible difference. 

In 2022, they founded Elaniti, a name inspired by the Sanskrit words ‘ela’ (earth) and ‘niti’ (ethical policies), reflecting their commitment to both the planet and the farming community.

Getting to the root of the problem

“At the time, we didn’t necessarily know the direction we’d go in, but we spent a lot of time talking to farmers, to really understand the problems they face,” explains Jarrett. “For both of us, it was important that we focus on the problem first, and then develop a solution to address it, piecing together the right team to make it happen. Too often, companies take the ‘hammer looking for a nail’ approach, but we wanted to do the opposite: identify a real pain point and build the right solution around it.”

The founders spent three to six months just speaking to farmers, agronomists, food purchasers, and a variety of other stakeholders in the complex value chains within the agricultural industry, in search of the specific niche where they could provide the right value for farmers and the environment.

“We spoke to as many people as we could,” says Vaidya. “What kept coming up again and again was the variance in crop performance and the inability to explain it based on available information. Farmers would see their crop yields vary by a factor of two, five, or even more, but they could not pinpoint what exactly caused this difference. Most variables remained the same, except for an unexplored missing piece: the soil biology.”

Leveraging Vaidya’s expertise in decision-support tools and machine learning, the two realized they could help farmers make better data-driven decisions. Just as the microbiome in our gut is crucial for our health, the soil microbiome is crucial for soil health, crop health and, by extension, the health of our food system. By integrating DNA sequencing with predictive analytics, Jarrett and Vaidya aimed to make soil biology insights accessible, helping farmers optimize yields, reduce costs, and support sustainable practices.

They put together a research application for Innovate UK, which was positively received. Together with Innovate UK, Rothamsted Research and Camgrain, Jarrett and Vaidya started working on a pilot.

Early adopters

“Once we understood the problem we were looking to solve, we focused on developing and testing our solution: could we actually predict crop performance outcomes more accurately with the additional soil biology data we had gathered? We spent most of 2023 building that proof of concept and refining our machine learning models. Ultimately, we were able to demonstrate that indeed, our approach holds significant promise when compared to existing models,” explains Vaidya.

Jarrett: “Our service involves using predictive analytics to correlate soil biology with vital crop health outcomes like yield, disease prevalence, and nutrient content. This enables growers to save time and money, for instance by improving the efficiency with which inputs are used, whilst also supporting environmental and sustainability objectives.”

The impact of their work is already evident. In one striking case, Elaniti helped a farmer understand why one field thrived while an adjacent field failed. Vaidya: “By analyzing the soil’s microbiome, we could pinpoint the absence of a crucial component of the microbial community responsible for suppressing disease. With this insight, the farmer could immediately adopt a practice that restores this microbial balance.”

It’s one of the growing list of examples in which Elaniti demonstrates the value of diving into the complex biological makeup of soils. The founders are convinced this will enable a viable, de-risked, and data-driven transition to net-zero agriculture: “Reducing dependence on chemical inputs can only be done gradually. Improving soil quality through better data can inform how we get there.”

Jarrett and Vaidya took their solution to Elaniti’s first customers mid-2024, and are now in the process of expanding the team and setting up partnerships. Having strong customer traction was undoubtedly one of the key arguments that drove biotope’s decision to invest when Elaniti presented its approach after an intense three weeks at the biotope basecamp.

Tapping into the biotope network

As a new addition to the biotope portfolio, Elaniti can count on tailored support and a 250K investment. 

Jarrett: “Together with the biotope team, we’re developing a strategic roadmap for the next 18 months. We are looking forward to bringing the same rigor we experienced from the biotope team during basecamp into planning the next couple of years and setting ambitious yet realistic targets.”

Gaining access to the VIB ecosystem is another important advantage for them: “We are an R&D venture, and the opportunity to use the top-tier research facilities on a project basis is massive for us. Access to the biotope network is another big plus. In large organizations, it is not always easy to identify the right people to speak with, so it will be super useful to have the help of the biotope team to connect the dots.”

Finally, Elaniti’s unique but complementary angle within the biotope portfolio offers opportunities. Jarrett: “So far, we have been interacting more with climate-oriented founders, not so much with biotech founders. Through biotope, we’ve learned more about how framing, innovation, risk perception, and mitigation work for biotech versus for climate tech, and how we might adapt our messaging.”

“I believe Elaniti offers a complementary angle within the biotope portfolio,” adds Vaidya. “There are definitely opportunities for joint research projects or collaborations, and we’ve already started talking to some of the other biotope portfolio companies about this.”

A mix of old and new

Elaniti is taking a horizontal, big data approach, building a large repository of data across a variety of spaces. While farmers have recognized the benefits of crop rotation for ages, Elaniti enhances this practice with data and machine learning: a mix of old and new. 

“Ultimately, we are aiming to maximize value for farmers—environmentally, economically, and socially,” says Jarrett. “What we are striving to achieve is a well-established target, but how we are going about it is entirely new.”

This approach circles back to the core values that brought the two founders together in the first place: humility towards the earth. “We believe that if you look closely enough, nature holds all the answers we need. It is just about working with it, instead of against it.”