What if you could harvest what you eat at your home? With IoT, the imaginations get transformed into reality. You get numerous on the house benefits by harvesting in your kitchen such as fresh greens, free from pesticides and consequently healthy and nutritious food. There is no need to rely on the climate’s temperature as this technology offers plug and grow feature. Also, it is possible to monitor and control with ideal plant growing recipe, which you preset using your connected mobile device including automatic watering and ideal light. It reduces food waste and works in the way you want. This innovative technology is what you always wanted as a part of your home appliances.
agrilution is a company that offers the plantCube, a complete vertical farming ecosystem consisting of a smart plug‘n’play home-growing appliance and consumables (pads with seeds), as well as a smartphone app that eliminates the need for a green thumb. Thereby agrilution enables consumers to grow the healthiest, freshest, and taste intensive greens in their own homes.
Origination of agrilution
Maximilian Loessl, Co-founder of agrilution is a 28-year old entrepreneur and highly sought-after speaker on the potential of Vertical Farming to improve our malfunctioning global food system.
About 5 years ago, while travelling through New Zealand, Maximilian first came across the topic of Vertical Farming, through a book called “The Vertical Farm” written by Dr. Dickson Despommier of Columbia University in New York City. He got amused by the concept of Vertical Farming, because it combined local food production with technology.
Maximilian has always been interested in the Global Grand Challenges and in his personal opinion, solving the food challenge is the most important one. Therefore, he reached out to the author and fortunately he immediately got reply. They both exchanged some Emails and Maximilian asked where in the world he could study something related to this technology. Dr. Dickson Despommier suggested HAS University in the Netherlands. So, Maximilian applied for that university, got in, and moved to the Netherlands.
During his studies Maximilian had a lot of free time as the town he lived and studied in was rather small and tedious. He spent most of the time researching Vertical Farming on the internet and discussing about it with his professors and experts from around the world.
Maximilian always tried to think of ways of getting involved with Vertical Farming during his studies, as he didn’t have the patience to wait 4 years until graduation. What bothered him most was that Vertical Farming had tremendous benefits for so many of the challenges traditional agriculture was facing, but no one really knew about it.
He then realized that he needed to show people that this technology was available and profitable today. He wanted to create awareness for Vertical Farming by democratizing the technology and making it available to the masses. That resulted in the idea of the plantCube and eventually the founding of agrilution in early 2013.
Targeted Customers
The technology agrilution provides is beneficial for everyone. But, to accelerate the awareness through people, the team of agrilution is targeting foodies – people that value high quality food. They are targeting the people who are looking for transparency, people that already shop for organic produce, and love cool technological revolutions. The range of people who have placed orders is quite wide from 25-65. And as the target customers differ from market-to-market, the team of agrilution needs to define their targeted audience frequently.
The unique thing about their product offering is that people don’t need any experience with growing plants, no need for a green thumb because the plantCube sets the right climate, waters the plants, and provides the right light for plants to thrive!
Hence, they provide full transparency to what people eat, what is in their food. Using the plantCube, people can get rid of pesticides. They get the freshest food, full with natural vitamin and mineral, no genetically modified organisms (gmo), beyond organic, taste intense, and unique varieties of plants they cannot find in supermarkets.
Future of Smart Home Sector
To Max, the future of IoT means the “Internet of Everything.” Since, agrilution is focusing on the smart home sector, they are paying close attention to what is going on in the development of smart kitchen appliances. Referring to the future of IoT and their contribution to it Maximilian asserts, “I think it will be possible that a sensor in your toilet tells you what nutrients your body needs and we will be able to grow plants based on your personal nutritional demand; in other words a highly bioavailable personal nutrition service. Additionally, you will be able to get recipe suggestions you can cook with the plants we grow!”
Speaking of the near future, the team of agrilution is launching their product ecosystem in Germany this year and are shipping to early adopters starting this month! A larger pre-order phase for the series product is targeted for after the summer.
