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Food & Environment Reporting Network: This app set out to fight pesticides. Once VC stepped in, the app helped sell them
https://thefern.org/2024/10/this-app-set-out-to-fight-pesticides-once-vc-stepped-in-the-app-helped-sell-them/This app set out to fight pesticides. Once VC stepped in, the app helped sell them.
Plantix started with the mission of reducing pesticide use—so how did it end up selling the very products it wanted to fight against?
By Stephen Robert Miller, October 24, 2024
It’s 2016 and Simone Strey looks giddy. In the video, a clip from a series titled Innovators Under 35: Germany, the agritech entrepreneur awkwardly explains the challenge of jumping into the business side of the startup world. “We are all more from science,” she says in her German-accented English. But she and her team of coders, anthropologists, botanists, and plant pathologists had struck on something unique. Something potentially very big.
Their app, called Plantix, could near-instantaneously diagnose a crop pest or disease simply by looking at a photo of the plant. This was potentially world-altering technology. For smallholding farmers in developing nations, who grow more than a third of the world’s food, having Plantix on your phone was like having a highly accurate plant pathologist in your back pocket, one who would also present afflicted farmers with options for treatment. If successful, Strey says a little sheepishly in the clip, Plantix would “save the environment by using less pesticides.”
Flash forward to 2019, and Strey has mounted a London stage before a sparse audience of private investors looking for the next big thing in agritech. Gone are the nervous laughs and apprehension. Standing in a knee-length green sweater in front of a blue-lighted wall, she confidently gestures to a projected image of her app in the weathered hand of a farmer somewhere in India and describes a future in which farmers grow more food, make more money, and send their kids to better schools.
…
A farmer uses the Plantix app to diagnose crop pests and disease. Photo courtesy of Plantix.
…
But by the time Strey faced those investors in London, she was describing a very different vision for Plantix. No longer did she speak about saving the environment or using fewer chemicals: Now, she said, “We want to start a revolution in the agri-supply chain.”
…
Plantix started with the mission of reducing pesticide use—so how did it end up selling the very products it wanted to fight against?
By Stephen Robert Miller, October 24, 2024
It’s 2016 and Simone Strey looks giddy. In the video, a clip from a series titled Innovators Under 35: Germany, the agritech entrepreneur awkwardly explains the challenge of jumping into the business side of the startup world. “We are all more from science,” she says in her German-accented English. But she and her team of coders, anthropologists, botanists, and plant pathologists had struck on something unique. Something potentially very big.
Their app, called Plantix, could near-instantaneously diagnose a crop pest or disease simply by looking at a photo of the plant. This was potentially world-altering technology. For smallholding farmers in developing nations, who grow more than a third of the world’s food, having Plantix on your phone was like having a highly accurate plant pathologist in your back pocket, one who would also present afflicted farmers with options for treatment. If successful, Strey says a little sheepishly in the clip, Plantix would “save the environment by using less pesticides.”
Flash forward to 2019, and Strey has mounted a London stage before a sparse audience of private investors looking for the next big thing in agritech. Gone are the nervous laughs and apprehension. Standing in a knee-length green sweater in front of a blue-lighted wall, she confidently gestures to a projected image of her app in the weathered hand of a farmer somewhere in India and describes a future in which farmers grow more food, make more money, and send their kids to better schools.
…
A farmer uses the Plantix app to diagnose crop pests and disease. Photo courtesy of Plantix.
…
But by the time Strey faced those investors in London, she was describing a very different vision for Plantix. No longer did she speak about saving the environment or using fewer chemicals: Now, she said, “We want to start a revolution in the agri-supply chain.”
…
