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Moonrider: Anoop Srikantaswamy shares how to get funded in 2025

Investment Climate Podcast: Fundraising Playbooks From Food Tech CEOs and VCs 

In this podcast series, Alex Shandrovsky interviews investors about benchmarks for funding Alt Proteins in 2025 and uncovers the investment playbooks of successful Climate Tech CEOs and Leading VCs.

Podcast Host Alex Shandrovksy is a strategic advisor to numerous global food tech accelerators and companies, including alternative proteins and cellular agriculture leaders. His focus is on investor relations and post-raise scale for agrifood tech companies. This podcast is syndicated through our media partners; Foodtech Weekly and Vegconomist.

Episode 18: Moonrider: Anoop Srikantaswamy shares how to get funded in 2025

In this episode, I sit down with Anoop Shrikantaswamy, founder & CEO of Moonrider, to discuss how his team is electrifying agriculture with electric tractors designed for smallholder farmers. From a chance conversation that sparked the idea to bootstrapping their way to a working prototype, Anoop shares how they raised $2.2M without cold-pitching VCs, the power of shameless outreach, and why their "Uber for Tractors" model is solving one of the biggest challenges in farming. This is a must-listen for anyone building in hard-tech, EVs, or agtech.

This podcast is packed with insights for founders, especially those in hard-tech and emerging markets.

Key Facts Moonrider:

• Goal: To empower every farmer to produce more, earn more, and save more.
• Recently raised a seed round of $2.2M from AdvantEdge Founders and Micelio Technology Fund.

Alex’s Top Findings:

1. Bootstrap Until You Have Proof of Concept. The company delayed raising VC funding until they had a functional prototype, ensuring stronger leverage and validation before pitching to investors. "We didn’t want to go ahead and raise it from VCs from day one because we wanted to keep ourselves in stealth…we reached out to a few angels who are founders themselves." Anoop pointed out.
2. You Are Only Two Calls Away From the Right People. "Fundamentally, I believe that you are just two calls away in terms of reaching out to get what you want." Anoop emphasizes the power of networking and warm introductions, illustrating how connections through mutual contacts played a key role in securing investors.
3. Hands-on Investors Build Conviction Quickly. Investors who physically experience a product are more likely to invest. Demonstrating a working prototype in person helped build trust. "Kunal himself wants to visit…he drove the tractor and was blown away with the kind of within the timeframe we were able to put together a product. He immediately committed a million dollars." Anoop revealed.