NXT Farm
NXT Farm is an innovative smart farming platform that was developed by H2O Geomatics. NXT Farm processes satellite imagery with its own cutting edge algorithms in order to extract information about a farmer’s field such as vegetation health, crop water stress, and crop nitrogen levels. With this data, they are able to detect issues such as pest and disease outbreaks before they become visible in a field. This allows onset problems to be fixed early which results in thousands of dollars in crops saved. With their data, NXT Farm also enables farmers to optimize their fertilization, pesticide application, irrigation, etc, in order to increase yields and reduce their environmental impact.
NXT Farm’s main competitors surround large platforms owned by large agriculture companies. Such platforms include Trimble and Climate Fieldview. However, NXT Farm’s main advantage is its focus on satellite imagery and the new algorithms that the company has developed which allow them to extract more information than anyone else from this imagery. They have built on this advantage to give their clients a fully remote solution that requires no infield sensors and thus, has an extremely low cost and huge ROI.
Traction
NXT Farm is currently managing over 600,000 acres on the platform for a total of over 50 crop consultants (precision agriculture advisors to farmers). Their success has seen revenue growth of over 300% since 2019.
NXT Farm’s platform is equipped with many features that are designed to grow yields and increase margins. Of those features, a few include the ability to receive alerts when any significant changes in soil moisture, crop water stress, NDVI, etc., occur along with a personalized action plan to help mitigate damage. In addition, their advanced algorithms are suited to combine information about nitrogen uptake, topography, soil type, and more to create management zones that can be edited to suit the users’ needs.
Following NXT Farm’s vision of becoming the next generation precision agriculture, they plan to expand this focus internationally to countries such as Mexico, Brazil, and Kenya. Although their product is perfect for these markets, with any new expansion initiative, comes a variety of challenges in selling to these new markets. NXT Farm will be focusing on finding appropriate partners to distribute its platform to these markets.
Founding Team
Claude Duguay, Founder & Scientific Advisor – Dr. Duguay received his Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Waterloo where he now holds a position as the University Research Chair in Cryosphere & Hydrosphere from Space. He is also a professor in the Department of Geography & Environmental Management at the University of Waterloo. Other education credentials that Dr.Duguay holds include: BSc (Université de Montréal, 1983), MS (SUNY at Buffalo, 1985), Ph.D. (University of Waterloo, 1989).
Pavel Bordioug, Founder & CEO – Pavel graduated from the University of Waterloo with a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering and has since leveraged his experience developing products, bringing cutting edge software to market and forging client relationships into a fully developed and growing commercialized precision agricultural platform. A notable career highlight was when he successfully built and sold his company SavyNet.
Funding
Since its initial launch, the company has not raised money and instead has been financed by the founders. They have also graciously received a few grants from government organizations such as NRC IRAP. It’s amazing to see how much growth and successes NXT Farm has achieved from the internal efforts of its founders.
As they look towards further expansion, NXT Farm plans to increase both its sales and development teams. They are seeking to hire at least two new sales representatives, one new agronomist, and one new full-stack developer to assist in their growth initiatives.
Revenue Model
NXT Farm’s main stream of revenue is through the offering of its service platform where they sell a yearly subscription for a $/acre price.
Details
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