Livestock monitoring agtech Drone-Hand lands $720,000 in pre-Seed

Victorian agtech startup Drone-Hand has raised $720,000 in a pre-Seed round for its autonomous livestock management platform. 

The raise was led by US VC Radius Capital, supported by three local agribusiness investors

Gippsland-based Edward Barraclough founded Drone-Hand in 2023, having grown up in NSW on a mixed livestock property. The idea was inspired by an observation by his 80-year-old father.

“He looked over my shoulder one day and said, ‘If that drone could check the stock for me, I could stay on the farm longer.’ That’s where it started,” Barraclough said.

“Drone-Hand is about creating tools that make life easier for people like my dad, farmers who want to stay on the land and work smarter. Autonomous systems are the next frontier in practical, farmer-first innovation.”

Drone-Hand doing its thing, counting livestock and checking their health

Drone-Hand came through Farmers2Founders, the national agtech accelerator that’s helped turn hundreds of on-farm ideas into investable startups. It’s also scored a LaunchVic agtech grant, was named the AIIA Victoria StartUp of the Year, and won the water, food and agribiz category in the Australian Technologies Competition last year.

Barraclough said Farmers2Founders was pivotal to his early growth. 

“Farmers2Founders gave us the education, network, and investor support to accelerate our vision,” he said. 

“Their guidance was instrumental in helping us articulate the real-world impact of autonomous systems for agriculture.” 

The technology combines machine learning, drone automation, and fixed-camera systems to deliver real-time, insights into livestock location, welfare, and infrastructure. It operate offline, so cloud connectivity isn’t an issue. It can track and count livestock, check water and fences, and flag animal-welfare issues, replacing hours on the bike with minutes in the sky. 

Trials with JBS Australia have already validated 99.9% accuracy in livestock identification with one of their systems under real-world conditions. Livestock mortality costs the sheep and cattle industries over $2 billion annually, losses Drone-Hand is hoping to reduce.

The funding will go toward team expansion, sales and marketing capability, and scaling commercial deployment across Australia over the next 6–18 months.

More than 200 producers have already put their hand up to give it a crack and the startup’s next step is converting trials into customers through on-farm demonstrations and strategic partnerships. 

The modular drone systems range from portable quadcopters for family farms to long-range Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) and “drone-in-a-box” models for 24/7 operation.

Drone-Hand plans to expand into North and South America following its Australian rollout, targeting large-scale operations in regions such as Texas and Brazil, where the technology’s offline autonomy offers significant advantages.