Sumanta Talukdar

Dr. Sumanta Talukdar is an Indian-origin entrepreneur and technologist who founded Gardin to bring data-driven plant intelligence to greenhouse growers worldwide. With a long career spanning optics, machine vision, and deep tech — including a co-founding role at WaveOptics, the augmented reality optics company that was acquired by Snap — Talukdar came to agricultural technology with a distinctive perspective: that modern food production was optimising everything except the plant itself. His frustration at the absence of real-time crop health data at scale drove him to create Gardin in Oxford in 2019.

As Founder and CEO, Talukdar has led Gardin to develop a proprietary optical photosynthesis sensor and AI platform that measures crop photosynthesis in real time — giving greenhouse growers an unprecedented window into the actual health and productivity of their plants. Unlike traditional metrics that measure inputs such as light, temperature, and humidity, Gardin's system reads the plant's physiological response directly, enabling faster and more targeted interventions that improve yields, reduce energy and water consumption, and detect stress weeks before it becomes visible to the human eye. Since commercial launch in June 2023, Gardin's sensors have been deployed across more than 20 crop species in greenhouses and polytunnels across Europe and North America.

Gardin has raised a total of $16.5 million in funding across multiple rounds, including a $4.5 million Seed 2 round in 2025 led by Navus Ventures, with participation from Oxford Innovation Finance, LDV Capital, MMC Ventures, Seedcamp, and Alchimia Investments. The company has forged strategic partnerships with Priva, Ridder, and Agriculture Investments Limited, with customers reporting up to a 10x return on investment. Gardin has been shortlisted for The Europas Awards and the Financial Times Tech Champions, and featured by Wired as one of Oxford's hottest start-ups.