Our mission is to redefine the way we farm. Smart Ag's products will enable farm operators big and small to benefit from affordable and cutting edge technology. Smaller, cheaper and smarter equipment can transform how food is grown by making farming easier and more sustainable.
Smart Ag offers a complete solution for autonomous farming based on the AAVI (Autonomous Ag Vehicle Intelligence) software platform and the SAVAG (Small Autonomous Vehicles for Ag) line of equipment. The farm equipment is sold online and though traditional channels like dealers. To run the farm equipment it is necessary for it to be connected to AAVI. AAVI is monetized through an annual subscription model per connected machine. Today there are many precision agriculture companies and technologies however there is not any way for farms to use completely automated equipment or benefit from the major advantages of internet connected equipment. One unique advantage of Smart Ag is that it offers a break-even conversion cost from conventional equipment and provides open API's to the AAVI platform encouraging extremely rapid and low cost innovation from willing 3rd parties. Smart Ag also allows farms to scale the size of their fleet one small machine at a time without additional programming or supporting infrastructure. Furthermore Smart Ag’s AAVI platform can run and control other brands of agriculture vehicles making it the go to resource for autonomous and internet connected farming. The market for Smart Ag is the row crop market of corn and soybeans (88.9 million acres of corn and 85.1 million acres of soybeans in 2015). This market is segmented primarily by farm size. Farms over 1,000 acres are the primary users today's large and expensive equipment. Research indicates that there are more than 18,750 farms in our market segment, and that number is increasing by 1-3% each year (NASS, 2007). Based on those numbers Smart Ag has a total available market of $1.12 billion in the tillage sector. We realistically expect to capture a 2% market share in 5 years.
The first step towards commercializing our technology is to develop a prototype for SAVAG and AAVI. We are contracting with EvaTech INC. to build the SAVAG prototype which will cost approximately $35,000. To develop AAVI we have contracted with several software developers and a team of computer engineering students at ISU. We expect the development of the AAVI prototype to take 1,000 man hours at $60/hr. Bringing the total development cost of the technology to $95,000. So far we have raised $50,000 dollars in the form of a convertible note which leaves us seeking an additional $45,000 which we hope we can raise through this competition other state of Iowa resources.