SALINAS, Calif. — Ag tech startups Ganaz and GroGuru each earned a $250,000 investment June 26 at the first ever Radicle Automation Challenge.
Four companies participated in the pitch competition, a partnership between Western Growers and acceleration fund Radicle Growth. Following the presentations and question-and-answer sessions, the six judges deliberated for quite a while before calling a tie and rewarding Ganaz and GroGuru.
Ganaz allows growers to recruit, train, survey and otherwise communicate with farm workers through the use of a mobile app. GroGuru uses underground sensors to collect and analyze data so producers can optimize their soil and water management.
Both companies had plans to develop more capabilities using the additional funding.
“We are going to continue to roll out our existing product to new customers, build market channels, research and development, new product development and commercializing our wireless underground solution, which is really a breakthrough technology to enable us to enter a lot of new markets,” said GroGuru CEO Patrick Henry.
Ganaz will use the funding to work on its app, which growers can use to send out information like plans for the season, shift changes due to weather and more. Farm workers can use the app but don’t have to have it to be part of the system – they can also interact with it via text message.
“We’ll be building out some of the features we talked about, so making it much easier to hire great agricultural workers, to find people with the right skills and get them onboarded quickly so that growers and workers can spend their time doing what they want to do,” said CEO Hannah Freeman.
Augean Robotics and FruitSpec also presented at the event. Augean discussed its Burro robot, which follows workers and moves freshly picked produce to and from collection points.
FruitSpec offers technology designed to give growers much earlier and more accurate yield estimates for their fruit.
Judges for the pitch session included Tom Nunes, vice president of operations for Salinas-based The Nunes Co., along with Kirk Haney, CEO and managing partner of Radicle Growth, and other investors.
The pitch competition took place on the eve of the Forbes AgTech Summit.
