Indigo Drones - Bringing Aerial Tech to Farmers

My name is Sergio Ballester and I'm the founder of Indigo Drones. I will present our smart agriculture division dedicated to monitor, analyze, and process agriculture data. So the problem, according to FAO in the tropics, the farmers use 10 times more agrochemicals than the rest in the world. They are also unable to meet export requirements to to mistakes in their yield predictions and their lack of appropriate technology to make accurate financial decisions. For this, we create a computer vision and data analytics platform that can optimize the use of agrochemicals, reduce the yield variability, and allocate financial resources to produce more profitable and sustainable over time. Ah, so first, the data is collected and uploaded to our platform by our subscribed pilots. Second, the farmers process the data with the algorithms that we create. Third, the farmers check online their results and make real-time decisions. And fourth, they track the area analyzed and they predict how the crop will behave over time. We are using Costa Rica as a pilot market, and with our current traction, we can reach around 40% of the total market in 3 crops: coffee, pineapple, and sugarcane in 3 years. Our prices range from $10 per acre to $50 per acre, monthly or by demand. We can train also the farmer that wants to collect the data by itself. And not use the pilot's license listed in our platform. We have the advantage that we have the only waterproof and spraying UAV in the market. We have a partnership with a multinational company. We have done tropical research for more than 10 years. We are the only ones to integrate the aerial data with the field data and we can track the data over time in order to reduce costs. With our current structure, we expect to reach $4 million in revenue in 5 years, considering only in Costa Rica, and we have to increase the operational expenses that we already have planned in 2017, and we will introduce ourselves to multinational companies such as Five Guys in pineapples and Starbucks in coffee. We are a multidisciplinary team that covers all areas of expertise: business, computer vision, robotics, agriculture, finance. And we also have done special partnerships to support us with universities and important institutions. So, so now we need to expand our business faster and enter to Central America, the $180 million market. For this, we are looking for only $180,000 per crop, this investment in 18 months. And we consider right now 3 crops. The investor can consider more crops in the region or could consider the same crops in other continents as well. We have done the difficult part, that is to create the software. Now, the speed, we need speed to enter the market, and we have the plan to do it, and we can reach it, the 10% of the Central American market in 5 years, only in these 3 crops. Thank you very much.

Great. Okay, if you can switch now to your face. You know, I'm gonna start with a question this time, guys, and then turn it over to Sunil next and Jason third. You, you, I think it was your market slide, you talked of just a few million dollars is the total size of the Costa Rican market, and I was assuming, and, and if I recall correctly, that's your potential revenue from achieving 40% share of Costa Rican agriculture, not the size of the overall market. And I don't think that was very clear.

Exactly as you were explaining, yes.

Okay, great. And then, so you have a multi-million dollar opportunity to get a 40% share in Costa Rica. So related to that, I have the question, which is, you know, I presume you're looking at the larger farms and agri— not the smaller ones. And what percentage of Costa Rica farming is run by those larger agriculture companies?

65% of the market is run by multinationals, basically. and they also own small farmers. So basically, if we get one big customer, it's like a domino effect because all of the small ones will want to copy it. So we have start with a medium. This past 2 years, we developed the idea and the software through medium farmers, and this year we have the same, we have actually the algorithms to show to multinationals.

Okay, Sunil, you're next. Question.

Okay.

And I'm reading the chat as well.

Okay, good job, Sergio. I have a bit of experience in this area. I'm on the board of a Canadian public company called EarthCast, where we have multispectral sensors in space on satellites, and one of the big use cases is for agriculture, for precision agriculture, for data collection for farmers in real time to devices. And the way that we're looking at this is drones are certainly an important part of data capture, but one part. And so it's about the sensors that you're going to be developing for these drones, how they interact with the data that's coming from satellites that are able to see through clouds and look into crops and below tree cover, and then communicate to tractors and precision agriculture type of hardware that are able to then immediately interact with the fields, and of course interacting with the farmers through mobile devices and all this real-time information. So my question to you is, I looked at your team and you do have people with data visualization and electrical engineering, which is great, but are you, are you building your company now in anticipation of how we're going to be connecting with all types of other sensors in other types of modalities so that we actually have a solution that is going to remain cutting edge as farming demands are looked at worldwide?

Thank you, Sunil, for the question. Actually, what you're saying is the drone itself, it's only a way of taking one of the small data that can be taken in the whole area. We are using sensors on the ground. We are using also the weather conditions and are made— we don't create the sensor actually, we use what exists and what we create is the algorithms that correlate the information of these sensors. So it will tell you if the data can be related to production and if it can, then you can predict how this can behave. But we are doing this especially in coffee because production itself in coffee, when the— in a national institution of coffee in Costa Rica, they're mixing the information they have with satellites and the drone imagery and the spectrometry also from the ground is what they are looking at.

That's what we are into. I would just suggest also that if your ability to make farmers comfortable with your partnership, with your technology, with your team, and be comfortable to adopt what you're offering now, as technology advances, your relationship with farmers, not just in Costa Rica, but in other Central American agriculture-rich markets, and in other countries where agriculture is a dominant industry, that will be a very valuable series of relationships to have because it's the trust of the farmers as they are introduced to new technology that can be very overwhelming, very complicated, that in the long run can be your competitive advantage.

Let's go on to Jason. Jason, do you have a question? There's some good questions coming in on the chat if we have a minute.

Yeah, two quick questions. So if I understood correctly, You are more of a software company versus a drone hardware company. So I'm assuming your solution's tightly knit with a drone OEM manufacturer. Do you have a strategic relationship with a drone manufacturer who's providing the hardware? Because I'm with a company that makes a drone for the Korean Air Force. I know how hard just the drone technology is. So how are you— what is the relationship like?

Perfect. I started actually to try to do the drone and it didn't work because the technology, I don't have access to that, but I have access to the knowledge of software. So I do, we specialize in the data that is obtained by the drones or the sensors of the drones. And we grab the data and we link the data from the field.

But just going back to the question, do you have a relationship with this specific drone?

I do have. It's with this Chinese company called DJI, and we have the agriculture drone. So it's specialized for spraying and it's waterproof. So also it's for tropical conditions, basically.

Okay, just a second, a real, real second question, or really an— I honestly, just an idea for you is to look at what I call adjacent markets. So you're, you're addressing agriculture, but in those same areas you could look at deployment of insecticides to fight malaria, both for the human population and then also for livestock as well. Disease prevention for livestock where there are livestock and people in remote areas, and this could be a delivery system for that, and that could make your target market more diversified and a lot larger.

Let me bring up— and that's just an idea, so you don't need to comment— let me bring up a comment from the chat, and then we gotta move on. Multiple people have asked and seconded, what is, uh, you know, how do you— who's your biggest competitors, and, and how do you see yourself as different from them? And if you can keep this one short and sweet so we can get to our final presentation, that would be great.

We actually create a platform where the pilots can upload. Any pilot in the world can be hired by a farmer and upload the data there, and the farmer runs the data in their server and obtains the, the data. So this, uh, this way of making everybody independent by, by itself So it's our key, and our main competitors will be, will be foreign competitors. Actually, we don't have local competitors, so that's why I will say it's easier to enter the market. Um, look, foreign competitors such as DroneDeploy or Precision Hawk, however, they will never enter the market because they Their business model, it's for large areas, so it's very hard to enter with their technology into small farmers, let's say.

Okay, that's a good answer. So you're— that, and by the way, it's a great answer for the general thesis of this call or this webinar, which is a lot of these companies, the social innovation, carbon credits, etc., are in the countries and regions of the world where these problems exist directly, and that in and of itself can be a major competitive advantage over U.S. companies or other companies that are trying to help, but they're one step removed. So thank you very much. Well done.