Ukrainian startup FarmFleet has successfully delivered its initial shipment of agricultural drones to the United States, marking a significant milestone for the company. This achievement follows FarmFleet’s first round of investments secured during the summer of 2023.
According to Valery Yakovenko, one of the founders of the startup, 15 service companies used FarmFleet technology in Ukraine, each of which is a sufficiently powerful service business, where the number of drones at one company reached 20 boards.
” In the States, the service business is now at an earlier stage compared to Ukraine, and it is about the formation of separate business units, which can have 1 drone and the service company is a sole trader or a self-employed person, locally they are called contractors. The finer structure of the market is the difference between the American market and Ukraine, that is, the end user who manages the service business in agro is different ,”
Yakovenko explained.
The co-founder of the company added that along with the development of the product for immediate future users, the startup attracted the interest of other stakeholders – universities and innovation accelerators.
“Unlike Ukraine, the education system in the USA has separate funding for launching joint projects in the direction of developing new technological solutions, or, in our case, developing recommendations or environmental justification for the use of robotics together with university representatives,”
Yakovenko said .
It is about the opening and financing of laboratories, as well as about direct grant programs from educational institutions capable of covering the issue of financing the expansion of R&D personnel, he noted. ” This is the experience that I would like to scale to Ukraine ,” the businessman emphasized.
According to FarmFleet, the company plans to launch the product in the spring of 2024 and already has agreements with local players.
“We are creating a universal software product that should work with service companies with any equipment, and in the future with other types of robotics than drones ,” Yakovenko clarified.
He noted that the startup secured its initial investments earlier in the year and outlined the company’s ambitious plans for the current year. FarmFleet aims to oversee the cultivation on the first 50,000 hectares of land.
“At this pace, securing another funding round of $7 million with a valuation of $50 million is entirely feasible for the next year,”
said Yakovenko.
Previously, it had been reported that Ukrainian state-owned enterprise Antonov was expanding its drone production in response to the Russian invasion.