BREAKING NEWS: Heliponix Wins Second Stage Investment From Purdue University Venture Ag-Celerator Fund. Midwest AgTech Investments On The Rise.
By iGrow News | December 19, 2018
Midwest indoor agriculture startup, Heliponix (Evansville, IN) has won a second stage investment of $50k from the Purdue Ventures Ag-Celerator fund in West Lafayette, IN. The company, Heliponix provides consumers rotary aeroponic™ appliances called GroPods®. Although the appliance is the size of a dishwasher, it is capable of yielding a full head of leafy green vegetables on a daily basis by staggering harvests. These unprecedented yields are achieved by constantly replacing the non-perishable seed pods supplied by a monthly subscription. Not only is the appliance is able to grow CLEAN plants faster and more reliably than outdoors, but it only uses $7 of energy per month, and 6 gallons of water per month! It can even be configured to grow fruiting plants, or dwarf varieties of specialty crops.
The advanced IoT algorithms completely automate the farming process for consumers who have no previous knowledge or time to spend catering to the needs of plants. “We turn black thumbs green by collecting an incredible amount of data from the sensors in the GroPods deployed across the USA which is then fed into our machine learning algorithm”, siad CTO and Co-Founder Ivan Ball. “We then use this data to simulate and maintain environmental conditions for specific plants over WiFi without any additional maintenance from the user”.
Time lapse video generation included in the mobile application of each GroPod user.
This is only possible through the former NASA student engineers’ multiple utility patents which were filed after Co-Founders Scott Massey and Ivan Ball began prototyping designs in their apartment as undergraduate students at Purdue University. They had met while previously designing hydroponic growth chambers researching the optimal light spectrum to grow plants using LEDs with the least amount of energy. This research study was sponsored by a NASA grant across several universities to advance interplanetary, agricultural technologies under Dr. Cary Mitchell. However, Massey and Ivan went against the graduate route of most engineers in this position, and co-founded the company on a theory that the evolution of agriculture is on an irreversible trajectory towards consumer aeroponics appliances.
Young farmers inspecting their harvest of genova basil in their GroPod.
“If you wanted ice in the 1800’s, you needed to wait until winter when the climate allowed freezing temperatures. This was the status quo until the invention of refrigeration allowed ice to be made in centralized, ice factories that could produce year round. Ice factories defined the ice industry until personal ice factories, or refrigerators eventually became the standard means to produce ice, said Massey. “Much like the ice industry, agriculture is completely dependant on a stable climate in a world with a climate less stable than before. This was true until micro controllers and LEDs needed to farm indoors made recent, giant leaps in efficiencies/cost, so vertical farming could be more profitable than ever before. Despite the overwhelming amount of capital being invested into massive vertical farms, there are few instances in history where a decentralized version of a technology did not greatly disrupt the market share for centralized business models. By overcoming the knowledge gap that regular people lack about farming with sensors, IoT software, and automation; we have opened a new frontier for Agriculture, and we will take a giant leap into the future of food”.
GroPod at Forbes AgTech Summit in Indianapolis.
The aeroponic appliance, consumer business model has many inherent advantages. The nonperishable seed pods are manufactured in an automated k-cup packaging facility that drop ships directly to consumers to consolidate the entire supply chain through their proprietary software. Paying consumers invest into the hardware as opposed to institutional investment dollars for large vertical farms that are capital intensive with employees on payroll needed to maintain operations. There are no building or construction permits required for this business model that can be scaled to potentially millions of Americans without extensive capital investments beyond initial tooling, operating capital for inventory, and marketing needs. Although these benefits are all welcomed in the age of toxic outbreaks, the appliance is still listed at $2k which Massey explains is normal for any new product launch.
“The toxic Ecoli outbreak that killed too many people is symptom of a much larger problem in our current food system. Consumers are demanding transparency and accountability as the trust in organic labeling continues to fall with more scandals, and these toxic outbreaks become more common. This reactionary food system is only alerted after a death or ailment has been linked to a plant which often times goes unnoticed as the cause of the illness. We believe farming is a basic human right that every individual is entitled to, and we have a proactive solution for this global problem. When our farmers calculate the return on their investment (typically 1-2 years depending on the crop), they often find an immediate return on their investment when including the health benefits of eating safe and fresh produce that tastes better for themselves or their families”, according to Massey.
Harvest of a customer’s romaine lettuce, red russian kale, arugula, spinach, and genova basil.
Massey attributes their success in fundraising, team building, and sales through the resources available to entrepreneurs in the state of Indiana. The Purdue foundry, Agrinovus Indiana, CoWork Evansville, the Indiana Small Business Development Center, Purdue WestGate, Centric Indiana, Techpoint, the Vectren Foundation, the Mandela Washington Fellowship, and Elevate Ventures among many other entities have given exposure, capital, and industry introductions needed to not only start, but scale an AgTech company. The convergence of these resources in Indiana’s AgBioScience sector have amounted to an entrepreneurial hotbed throughout the state, and it’s Time To Tell
CEO, Scott Massey (center) speaking at the recent Agrinovus Innovation Summit.