Oct 2, 2017
Hexagro Urban Farming is an Italian startup based in Milan and led by an international team of engineers, designers and gastronomes. Since almost a year, Hexagro UF is committed to develop scalable, sustainable and sharing-economy based solutions to enhance the production and supply of fresh and healthy food to everyone. Its first product, the Living Farming Tree (LFT), is an automated, modular and easy-to-use indoor farming system to grow food without the need of large spaces, complex installations or fertile land.
Hexagro UF is today (October 1st) launching its first crowdfunding campaign on the European platform of https://goo.gl/eEpkSr
Katana is an acceleration program launched by the EU and related to the Horizon 2020 program to foster innovation and entrepreneurship. Almost a year ago, the open call for startups and independent projects collected more than 500 applications, shortlisted the best 100 and started a 6-months journey of acceleration. A variety of mentors and webinars helped startups refine their business models and find decisive industrial partners to bring their product to the market. Now, the last step is due, startups will announce their crowdfunding campaign and compete for the final price of €100K offering their unique products on sale for the first time.
Hexagro Unique Value Proposition
Scalable: The LFT biomimic nature designs to develop a system able to maximize yield of production while maintaining the minimum volume. It is able to automatically adapt production pattern depending on the crop type and environmental conditions of the indoor space. Moreover, thanks to the “global connector” (a specific structural and technological connector) every user will be able to expand his configurations based on his farming needs. Thus, guaranteeing the lowest initial investment and providing several solutions to scale up and upgrade in the future. Every farming platform is furthermore managed completely independently one-another in order to provide specific light, water and nutrient conditions to every crop type and its specific growing phase.
Modular and automated:
Thanks to the “global connector”, again, the system is not only able to be scaled up or adapted to the crop type, but it will furthermore be able to detect plant growth and immediately calibrate the specific production pattern for each platform, thus understanding from the environment which parameters should be changed. Several sensors, LED lights and Hexagro proprietary monitoring computer will be at the heart of the system, always guaranteeing a sacksful harvest with minimum time of maintenance required from the user.
Aeroponics:
The aeroponic technology has been developed by NASA in the 80s in order to create a new sustainable way to produce food in space. Aeroponic, indeed, means no soil and no liquid water (on the contrary to the most common hydroponic systems), but plants are grown in an inert substrate - we commonly use cotton - and the roots are freely let to develop beneath. Our watering system is a specific mist of water and nutrients. This technique leaves the roots well aerated in order to absorb more oxygen, more nutrients and therefore grow faster, tastier and more nutritious. Thanks to this technology every user will obtain a successful harvest saving up to 95% of water consumption, 5 times faster, without compromising the quality of its produce and its nutritional values (estimated at around 150% higher than conventional farming)
Through aeroponic it is possible to produce from micro-greens and sprouts up to aromatic herbs, salads, leafy greens and berries. Moreover, further configurations of the LFT (will be released later on) will be also able to produce higher plants, as tomatoes, cucumbers, medicinal herbs and many more.
Team Members BIOs:
Msc. Felipe Hernández – COL
Founder, CEO and Head Product Development
Industrial designer and social entrepreneur with experience in additive manufacturing technologies and design thinking methods.
Msc. Arturo Montufar – MEX
Co-Founder, CTO and Head System Engineering
Mechatronics engineer specialized in automation and control electronics with experience in different high tech industries as well as rehabilitation systems.
Msc. Alessandro Grampa – IT
Co-Founder, CMO and Head Business Development Gastronome and sustainability project developer with worldwide experience. Previously co-founded a startup of food sharing economy, problem solver and communicator.
Msc. Milica Jovanovic – SRB
Lead Software Engineering Development - Software engineer specialized in data science, artificial intelligence and problem complexity with experience developing platform infrastructure.