Agurotech is a technology start-up that develops hardware and software solutions for the agricultural industry. The global climate crisis causes regions in the world to face more frequent, severe, and longer lasting extreme weather events. This leads to water scarcity, which has destabilizing effects on the farming industry and our society’s food security. Agriculture uses 70% of the global water supply. In the EU, agriculture represents 31% of total water use, and this percentage can reach up to 80% in regions of Southern Europe use. Agricultural practices are highly dependent on irrigation in many countries and this is expected to grow even more with increased global warming. Farmers encounter increased costs of irrigation due to the elevated energy prices. Irrigation is becoming increasingly necessary and more expensive. Farmers are looking for ways to maximize their crop yield, while using as few resources as possible. However, currently farmers base most of their decisions on intuition and experience. Less than 5% of farmers in the EU use their data to make fact-based decisions on irrigation to optimize their yield based on use of resources. Agurotech's first product is an irrigation management solution that advises farmers exactly on the right moment and amount of irrigation specific to their soil- and crop type. This helps farmers to increase their yield by at least 20% and reduces use of resources, water, fuel, fertilizers and pesticides anywhere between 30% to 85%. One of Agurotech's key priorities is to scale up sales and marketing within targeted key farming segments. Scaling up too quickly is a pitfall that is familiar amongst (Tech) start-ups and has shown to have disastrous consequences for some start-ups in our specific industry. The challenges that may arise from premature scaling include: failing to identify target market segments due to too much focus on new customer acquisition, not reaching product-market fit, burning out your team and logistical and funding issues.
Agurotech’s strategy is to focus on offering products and services in selected niche segments before expanding to other segments. The goal of the project that is presented in this proposal is to start penetrating these prioritized segments in order to:
1. Validate the potential of these segments;
2. Realize a better product-market fit and;
3. Start realizing sales in these segments.
This project involves a controlled and fact-driven scale up of sales of Agurotech’s products and services in selected segments. As Agurotech has already realized an MVP and sales on a small scale within scattered market segments this is a logical next step to grow our business with more focus and to further validate market segments and execute on our business plan.
