According to the startup founders, in 2023, they plan to cultivate 50,000 hectares in the US agricultural market, thanks to FarmFleet technologies.
As reported by EastFruit, in addition to developing software, the Ukrainian agro startup FarmFleet has delivered its first agricultural drones from Ukraine to the USA. The company is actively working on launching its American product in the market.
One of the founders of the startup, Valery Yakovenko, spoke about this in an interview with Mind.
According to him, in Ukraine, 15 service companies have already adopted the FarmFleet technology, where the number of drones at one enterprise reached 20 drones in operation.
“In the United States, the service business is currently at an earlier stage compared to Ukraine, and it involves forming separate business units, each of which may have just one drone, and the service company is a sole proprietor or self-employed individual. They are locally referred to as contractors. The smaller market structure is a distinguishing feature of the American market compared to Ukraine. In other words, the end user managing the service business in agriculture is different”, — explained Yakovenko.
The co-founder of the company added, that with the development of the product for immediate future users, the startup has also attracted other stakeholders, including universities and innovation accelerators.
Read also: A fleet of drones is more cost-effective than seasonal workers — Valeriy Yakovenko
“Unlike Ukraine, in the United States, the education system has separate funding for launching joint projects in the development of new technological solutions or, in our case, developing recommendations or environmental justifications for the use of robotics together with representatives of universities”, — Yakovenko said.
We are talking both about the opening and financing of laboratories, and about direct grant programs from educational institutions capable of covering funding questions for expanding R&D personnel, he said. “This is the experience that we would like to scale in Ukraine,” the businessman emphasized.
According to FarmFleet, the company plans to launch its product in the spring of 2024, and it already has agreements with local players.
“We are creating a universal software product that should work with service companies using any equipment and, in the future, with other types of robotics besides drones”, — Yakovenko clarified.
Earlier, EastFruit reported that in June, FarmFleet successfully completed its first round of financing. The company managed to attract initial investments of $550,000 with an estimated value of $3,7 million.
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