Is an agro-biodiversity data-powered tech start up going to profitable?

Nikos Manouselis Agro-Know Technologies

nikosm@agroknow.gr

why is an agro-biodiversity data-powered tech start up going to

profitable?

We help organizations and people to address societal and

environmental challenges using solutions that are

informed and enhanced by high-quality data

We develop and put in real practice end-to-end, modular

solutions that transform data into meaningful knowledge

and services

why agriculture?

a huge market, globally

Food & Agricultural commodities production, http://faostat.fao.org

some figures

• Food - Gross Production Value globally in 2011: $2,318,966,621 millions

• Agriculture - Gross Production Value globally in 2011: $2,405,001,443 millions

• Investment in agriculture - Gross Capital Stock globally: $5,356,830 millions

… they are big

examples of EU production in 2010

Source: Eurostat

how many businesses?

going niche: feta

• (currently, still) protected milk product• Feta cheese demand: 200,000 tones

– 50% produced in Greece (90% goes to Greek market)

– a huge unmet demand, a growing potential

• ~300,000 people working in 100,000 production units in Greece only– ~100,000 people in relevant animal production– ~50,000 people in relevant agricultural production

~100,000 clients?~450,000 users?in one country?

why open data?

Open Definition

“Open data is data that can be freely used, reused and redistributed by anyone -

subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and sharealike”

why open data?

• Open data, especially open government data, is a tremendous resource that is as yet largely untapped– individuals and organisations collect broad range of

different types of data to perform their tasks

• Government is particularly significant in this respect– quantity and centrality of data it collects– most is public data by law, could be made open and

made available for others to use

closed data

• examples

…always bad?

open data for businesses

“new businesses and new business models are beginning to emerge: Suppliers, aggregators, developers, enrichers and enablers”“key link in the value chain for open data is the consumer…direct relevance to the choices individuals make as part of their day-to-day lives”

in agriculture: a political priority“How Open Data can be harnessed to help meet the challenge of sustainably feeding nine billion people by 2050”

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Key facts about agricultural trends

Agriculture is about to experience a “growth shock” in order to cover the exponentially increasing food needs of the global population

• All demographic and food demand projections suggest that, by 2050, the planet will face severe food crises due to our inability to meet agricultural demand – by 2050:

• 9.3 billion global population, 34% higher than today• 70% of the world’s population will be urban,

compared to 49% today• food production (net of food used for biofuels) must

increase by 70%

• According to these projections, and in order to achieve the forecasted food levels by 2050, a total investment of USD 83 billion per annum will be required

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Open Data in Agriculture

One of the most promising routes to agriculture modernisation is the provision of Open Data to all interested parties

• In an era of Big Data, one of the most promising routes to bootstrap innivation in agriculture is by the use of Open Data:– e.g. provisioning, maintaining, enriching with relevant

metadata, making openly available a vast amount of• The use and wide dissemination of these data sets is strongly

advocated by a number of global and national policy makers such as:– The New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition G-8

initiative– Food & Agriculture Organization of the UN– DEFRA & DFID in UK– USDA & USAID in the US

what is this data about?

agricultural science

biodiversity

examples of variety & diversity

data sets

maps

photos

databases

• publications, theses, reports, other grey literature• educational material and content, courseware• primary data, such as measurements & observations

– structured, e.g. datasets as tables– digitized, e.g. images, videos

• secondary data, such as processed elaborations– e.g. dendrograms, pie charts, models

• provenance information, incl. authors, their organizations and projects

• experimental protocols & methods• social data, tags, ratings, etc.• …

research(+) content

where can I find this data?

plug and play?• No!

– requires a deep understanding of the data– requires excellent data processing & analysis skills– requires very good technical skills

• will evolve into a data-powered value chain– the companies that develop innovative agro/ food

products (agro apps consumers) need…– …companies that build apps on agro data (agro data

consumers, agro apps producers) who need…– companies that process agro data (data science powered)

where to use this data?

there is more…

…and more…

…and much much more

why do we (Agro-Know) care?

Our vision

To add value to the rich information available in the

wide spectrum of agricultural and biodiversity sciences

To make it universally accessible, useful and meaningful, through

innovative tools, services and applications

Our values

use open data to solve meaningful societal challengescreate a data-powered ecosystem that may bootstrap agricultural & food innovationembrace all data sources, formats & types relevant to agricultural research & innovationpromote open source and open data

Unorganized Content in local and remote sites

Widgets

Authoring services

Data Discovery Services

Analytics services

Agro-Know Data Platform

Ingestion Translation Publication

Harvesting BlossomCultivation

Organized and structured Content in local and remote

DBs

Educational

Bibliographic

Other

Enrichment

Aggregate data from diverse sources

Works with different type

of data

Prepare data for

meaningful services

Educational

Bibliographic

data aggregation & sharing hub

in a data-powered value chain...

Open data providers (research institutions,

public sector etc)

Open data providers (research institutions,

public sector etc)

Agriculture & food start ups & industryAgriculture & food

start ups & industry

Innovative data-powered start upsInnovative data-

powered start upsVCs / angel investors

IncubatorsVCs / angel investors

Incubators

Data aggregators

Data aggregators

Techies & friends

Techies & friends

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…we are here

… we have a gap here

Data scientistsData scientists

not only hackers

but convincing business cases

its a long way to go

Creative Hackathon

Creative Hackathon

CreativeBoot camp

CreativeBoot camp

Ag & Food Business

Meet Ups

Demo & Investor Days

Demo & Investor Days

Introductory Course

Introductory Course

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take away point

“The future belongs to the companies

that turn data into products”

thank you!nikosm@agroknow.gr

http://www.agroknow.gr