Farm Friend, operator of a drone farm services business, secures latest Pre-A Series funding of over USD 1 million | Shunwei Investments
Recently, Farm Friend officially disclosed its latest round of financing. The company received Pre-A Series funding of over USD 1 million in July 2016, with the round led by GGV Capital. Other investors include ZhenFund and Shunwei Capital. The purpose of this round of funding is for Farm Friend to grow its team and to expand its market. In March this year, Farm Friend received an angel investment from Shunwei Capital in what was its early days. In the short span of six months Farm Friend has received further recognition from the capital market.
Riding the tailwind:
The agricultural drone services industry has developed swiftly in recent years, and the time for the industry growth dividend has come. To take industry leader XAIRCRAFT as an example: the company provided services for over 37300 hectares of farmland in 2015. As of October 2016, this figure has already risen to over 133,000 hectares. With over 120 million hectares of land under cultivation in China, more of such teams are coming online.
A worker spraying pesticide on the fields manually can cover around 1.3 hectares of land in a day; today, with an agricultural drone, 20 to 27 hectares of land can be treated in a day. As a result, farmers have been receptive to the dramatic advantages offered by drone services. However, new problems have emerged as the market began to warm up.
According to Yu Yang, founder of Farm Friend, agricultural drone services are of high-density and low-frequency in nature, and these characteristics have in turn led to resource allocation becoming a critical factor. For example, professional drone operators have to move across different areas in order to secure more orders as peak agricultural activity in every area lasts for only two to three months or so. Should drone operators be rooted in a specific area, the company will run into the problem of high idling rates. Furthermore, a good service platform can also maximize productivity of drone operators and the use rate for drones.
Farm Friend is a platform that focuses only on the efficient deployment of resources and the assignment of jobs; the company does not deal with either hardware or training. It can be understood as the “Didi Chuxing” of the agricultural drone services industry.
About the team:
Farm Friend founder Yu Yang, who comes from a farming family, holds a masters degree from the National University of Defense Technology. He was previously CTO of Linker Networks Inc., and has research and market experience with regard to drones. Meng Fanqi, the co-founder who is in charge of internal controls, has worked at Huawei for seven years and also have two years of drone industry experience. Hou Xiaoxiao, the other co-founder who is responsible for strategy, previously worked in the asset management department of Goldman Sachs for two years.
According to Shunwei Capital founding partner Tuck Lye Koh, the entire core team of Farm Friend are entrepreneurs who are willing to work hard and who are close to the ground. These are qualities that are fundamental for agricultural start-ups.
GGV Capital (investor in Farm Friend) managing partner Jenny Lee said: “The agricultural service is a massive market. At the same time, the Farm Friend team has a pretty comprehensive understanding of drones as well as of the agricultural drone service model. They are also very close to the ground. These are the two key reasons for our investment.”
As for the outstanding issues that the platform needs to tackle, founder Yu Yang said that currently the platform needs to standardize the agricultural service process, and establish service quality standards and an assurance system in order to protect the interests of various parties.
