“For farmers, everything really revolves around the climate and the weather: it determines how crops grow, when and how much they need to irrigate and whether they can even use machines on the land,” Van den Brand begins. “The fact that the weather is becoming increasingly extreme and erratic due to climate change makes this already tough puzzle for farmers even more difficult. Our technology – a combination of hardware (soil moisture sensors and weather stations) and software that translates the data into models – provides farmers with 'real time' information. For example, they can plan the irrigation of their crops more intelligently to prevent drought stress.”
'Data potential' in agriculture
Van den Brand explains that with digitalization in the agricultural sector still has a world to win. “Farmers are naturally used to doing a lot on intuition instead of with data. On the one hand, there is a lot of potential there, on the other hand, it requires a different way of working by farmersAll technology we supply must be usable in 'farm practice' and prove itself immediately. Fact is also that we have a small farming community in the Netherlands, which means that good references are worth their weight in gold.”
Investments put to good use
The still young Agurotech was able to ROM InWest's investment in February this year will be put to good use. “Like every start-up technology company, we also had to invest heavily to get our hardware and software completely free of teething problems and to be able to invest in our growth. Previously, we did not want to enter the market on a large scale,” says Van den Brand. “The money went to staff for our R&D activities, making production processes scalable and investments in sales and marketing activities. We now supply to ten countries and in terms of growth we are somewhere between start-up and scale-up. We have almost completed the development phase. I am happy that we still have regular contact with ROM InWest. We give them updates about our company and in return their advice helps us to continue to look at our business development with a helicopter view.”
Next step: scale up
Getting everything operational and ready for further scaling up in terms of distribution is currently the biggest challenge for Agurotech, Van den Brand explains. “A guaranteed supply of parts, lightning-fast assembly and reliable logistics are vital to supply large-scale technology to a seasonal industry such as agriculture. Ideally, you also have hardware stock ready. To increase brand awareness in the market, we go to trade fairs, give demonstrations and actively look for partnerships and parties with a large customer database that we can use.”
Tips for other entrepreneurs
“Stay with you core business”, says Van den Brand firmly when we ask her for tips for other innovative entrepreneurs. “Especially with new ideas and concepts, the temptation can be great to think broadly and to include all sorts of things in your invention. But that also quickly makes your business case too complex. That has a delaying effect. Remember: you can always expand later. So keep it small at first, make hard choices and be ruthless in your own agenda – especially in the beginning. And put customer satisfaction first. Good references are incredibly important.”
“Ultimately become a market leader”
Where will Agurotech be in a year? “We want to broaden our proposition in the long term. Where our focus is still really on drought stress and irrigation, we ultimately want a total solution for farmers that also provides an image of the disease pressure of crops, for example. As much as 20% to 40% of the global harvests are currently lost due to crop diseases. We would also like to use satellite images to be able to 'measure' even larger areas of agricultural land. Ultimately, we want to become the market leader in sensors and weather stations for farmers, at least in Europe.”
