Gardin

Gardin is an Oxford-based agritech company developing cutting-edge sensor and AI technology to transform how greenhouse growers monitor and respond to crop health in real time. Founded in 2019 by Dr Sumanta Talukdar, a serial deep-tech entrepreneur, Gardin was built on the observation that while growers measure everything around their plants — soil, air, humidity, temperature — they have historically had no way to measure the plants themselves directly and at scale.

The challenge facing the global Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) sector is acute: energy and labour costs have surged, emissions regulations are tightening, and skilled growers are in short supply. The $200 billion CEA market is expanding rapidly, yet growers have been forced to make critical crop management decisions without direct, real-time plant-level data — leading to waste, yield losses, and unnecessary resource consumption.

Gardin's solution is a patented optical photosynthesis sensor that uses chlorophyll fluorescence to measure crop stress and health in real time, detecting problems weeks before they become visible to human observation or conventional cameras. The plug-and-play sensor operates autonomously within seconds of deployment, feeding data into a cloud-based AI platform that delivers actionable insights on light optimisation, irrigation, CO2 assimilation, and yield prediction. The platform has been deployed across more than 20 crop species, from algae to tomatoes, in polytunnels and greenhouses across Europe and North America.

Commercial customers have reported up to 10x return on investment, documented yield increases of up to 15%, profitability boosts of up to 30%, and energy savings of 20–30%. In 2025, Gardin closed a $4.5 million Seed 2 round led by Navus Ventures, with backing from LDV Capital, MMC Ventures, Seedcamp, Alchimia, and Oxford Innovation Finance. Founder Dr Talukdar previously co-founded and exited WaveOptics for over $500 million.