Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Pollenity (Introducing the Internet of Bees: A Smart Beehive System)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2020-03-01 al 2020-06-30
Pollenity (former Bee Smart Technologies) has the vision of creating a symbiotic coexistence between humans and nature.
Our mission is to design, develop, and apply technology and methodology to interface humanity with nature.
During the last 50 years, the population on Earth has more than doubled, increasing from ~3.5 to ~7.5 billion people today. With that our demand for food has grown proportionally. The agricultural industry has been undergoing rapid modernization and consolidation to address this demand. However, one key factor has been traditionally neglected - pollination. We rely on one-third of all the food on our tables to be pollinated by honeybees, but their number is dwindling. For the same 50 years period, the number of beehives in the world has only grown by 30% - from ~60 to ~80 million. This obvious shortage has catalyzed the creation of a new industry - “pollination on demand”. Beekeepers are compelled to move their beehives from farm to farm in order to provide this service. Unfortunately, beekeepers are not used to such large scale operations and bees are not used to be moved too often. This results in honeybee colony losses of 32% to 45% per year in the US and 20-50% in Europe.
Pollenity offers products and solutions for the beekeeping sector aiming at digitalization of the industry and allowing for the beekeepers to leverage the advancements in sensor and communication technologies combined with machine learning capabilities and state-of-art traditional_knowledge.
Pollenity is designated for beekeepers who utilize modern approach and techniques in order to optimize their operations and thus increase production’s quality and quantity.
Objectives of the current feasibility study:
Task 1.1: Market assessment
Task 1.2: Technological feasibility.
Task 1.3: Pricing model assessment.
Task 1.4: Risk assessment.
Task 1.5: Intellectual Property (IP) assessment.
Task 1.6: Business Plan.
Our mission is to design, develop, and apply technology and methodology to interface humanity with nature.
During the last 50 years, the population on Earth has more than doubled, increasing from ~3.5 to ~7.5 billion people today. With that our demand for food has grown proportionally. The agricultural industry has been undergoing rapid modernization and consolidation to address this demand. However, one key factor has been traditionally neglected - pollination. We rely on one-third of all the food on our tables to be pollinated by honeybees, but their number is dwindling. For the same 50 years period, the number of beehives in the world has only grown by 30% - from ~60 to ~80 million. This obvious shortage has catalyzed the creation of a new industry - “pollination on demand”. Beekeepers are compelled to move their beehives from farm to farm in order to provide this service. Unfortunately, beekeepers are not used to such large scale operations and bees are not used to be moved too often. This results in honeybee colony losses of 32% to 45% per year in the US and 20-50% in Europe.
Pollenity offers products and solutions for the beekeeping sector aiming at digitalization of the industry and allowing for the beekeepers to leverage the advancements in sensor and communication technologies combined with machine learning capabilities and state-of-art traditional_knowledge.
Pollenity is designated for beekeepers who utilize modern approach and techniques in order to optimize their operations and thus increase production’s quality and quantity.
Objectives of the current feasibility study:
Task 1.1: Market assessment
Task 1.2: Technological feasibility.
Task 1.3: Pricing model assessment.
Task 1.4: Risk assessment.
Task 1.5: Intellectual Property (IP) assessment.
Task 1.6: Business Plan.
1. Conducted a market assessment with a clear goal of understanding where our products could achieve the best product-market fit. Create a list of potential partners and get in touch with them.
- We were able to pinpoint the best geographies to grow our operations, conducted meetings with potential partners and outlined a strategy.
2. Create hypothesis about the future development roadmap of our product and test them with live candidates.
- After having some exposure to our customers we had a lot of ideas about how our product portfolio can evolve. We selected around 40 different beekeepers from our targeted geographies and conducted interviews with them with the goal to estimate the value our products can create for them. We were successful in evaluating the features which can instantly make an impact in the industry and created a road map for their development.
3. Pricing model establishment.
- The key aspect of any business is to create a scalable and repeatable profit. This is why while debating the key features our system needs to have, we also designed experiments to test our pricing model and found out that we need to have a very flexible model if we want to capitalize on both commercial and small beekeepers.
4. Risk assessment.
- The current global pandemic demonstrated how important is to have the right mindset when assessing the risk at an enterprise. We created a risk assessment procedure and put it in place as well as a thorough contingency plan related to different scenarios around the COVID-19 crisis development.
5. IP protection.
- When assessing our competition, we found out that a patent on our novel technology would be a great competitive advantage and will not only protect us but allow for the creation of meaningful partnerships. This is why we decided to go ahead and patent the design of our most innovative product - the Beebot. We applied for a grant under the IPA4SME initiative and were awarded compensation on both fees and legal services.
6. The business plan of Pollenity was almost completely rewritten due to the key finding we were able to harvest from the current feasibility study.
- We not only created a much more tangible goal for ourselves but also understood how to weather the storm when it comes to black swan events like a global pandemic.
- We were able to pinpoint the best geographies to grow our operations, conducted meetings with potential partners and outlined a strategy.
2. Create hypothesis about the future development roadmap of our product and test them with live candidates.
- After having some exposure to our customers we had a lot of ideas about how our product portfolio can evolve. We selected around 40 different beekeepers from our targeted geographies and conducted interviews with them with the goal to estimate the value our products can create for them. We were successful in evaluating the features which can instantly make an impact in the industry and created a road map for their development.
3. Pricing model establishment.
- The key aspect of any business is to create a scalable and repeatable profit. This is why while debating the key features our system needs to have, we also designed experiments to test our pricing model and found out that we need to have a very flexible model if we want to capitalize on both commercial and small beekeepers.
4. Risk assessment.
- The current global pandemic demonstrated how important is to have the right mindset when assessing the risk at an enterprise. We created a risk assessment procedure and put it in place as well as a thorough contingency plan related to different scenarios around the COVID-19 crisis development.
5. IP protection.
- When assessing our competition, we found out that a patent on our novel technology would be a great competitive advantage and will not only protect us but allow for the creation of meaningful partnerships. This is why we decided to go ahead and patent the design of our most innovative product - the Beebot. We applied for a grant under the IPA4SME initiative and were awarded compensation on both fees and legal services.
6. The business plan of Pollenity was almost completely rewritten due to the key finding we were able to harvest from the current feasibility study.
- We not only created a much more tangible goal for ourselves but also understood how to weather the storm when it comes to black swan events like a global pandemic.
Amidst the uncertainty, proposed by the unexpected pandemic situation, our team conducted this feasibility study with the utmost respect to the circumstances and attention to the variables we were able to indicate. One of the unexpected positive outcomes of the situation was a surge in the demand for remote monitoring of beehives. We believe that the research yielded incredible results which helped us verify our value proposition with real potential customers in target markets we can easily get access to following our updated “go to market” strategy.
We deemed the business idea feasible and even though it was challenging to conduct market analysis during a global pandemic, we believe that the solutions we offer will bring sustainability into a market niche where it is much needed. This is why our company could thrive in such challenging times - we offer a service that is not only nice to have, but could remarkably boost the efficiency of the operations of mid and large scale beekeepers.
The COVID-19 crisis has a detrimental effect to the global economy, affecting all elements of the value chains of almost all businesses, including agriculture. Starting out our feasibility study, we believed that we can build on top of existing solutions and create impact by further enabling beekeepers and their partners with access to unprecedented data, but the “black swan” event which was the global pandemic proved that digitalization may, in fact, become the reality for a vast number of different industries.
Utilizing the support by our coach assigned through the H2020 Phase 1 program, we were able to position ourselves better in the whole value chain of the beekeeping industry and reaffirm our value proposition within one of the most prominent markets for our technology – Ireland. Our team’s motivation grew even further when we realized that our promise of a technological remote beekeeping assistant may change the way global agriculture interfaces with one of its most important yet underappreciated subsectors – beekeeping.
We are going to focus on the European market for the next two years and the biggest discovery we made was that we have an even better chance of success here due to the segmentation of the market and the individual approach to beekeepers that we decided to adopt. Our team conducted interviews and designed experiments to validate the most critical hypothesis that our business model created. After this feasibility study, we march on motivated and excited about bringing a much-needed change in an industry that is critical to the food security of the future generations.
We deemed the business idea feasible and even though it was challenging to conduct market analysis during a global pandemic, we believe that the solutions we offer will bring sustainability into a market niche where it is much needed. This is why our company could thrive in such challenging times - we offer a service that is not only nice to have, but could remarkably boost the efficiency of the operations of mid and large scale beekeepers.
The COVID-19 crisis has a detrimental effect to the global economy, affecting all elements of the value chains of almost all businesses, including agriculture. Starting out our feasibility study, we believed that we can build on top of existing solutions and create impact by further enabling beekeepers and their partners with access to unprecedented data, but the “black swan” event which was the global pandemic proved that digitalization may, in fact, become the reality for a vast number of different industries.
Utilizing the support by our coach assigned through the H2020 Phase 1 program, we were able to position ourselves better in the whole value chain of the beekeeping industry and reaffirm our value proposition within one of the most prominent markets for our technology – Ireland. Our team’s motivation grew even further when we realized that our promise of a technological remote beekeeping assistant may change the way global agriculture interfaces with one of its most important yet underappreciated subsectors – beekeeping.
We are going to focus on the European market for the next two years and the biggest discovery we made was that we have an even better chance of success here due to the segmentation of the market and the individual approach to beekeepers that we decided to adopt. Our team conducted interviews and designed experiments to validate the most critical hypothesis that our business model created. After this feasibility study, we march on motivated and excited about bringing a much-needed change in an industry that is critical to the food security of the future generations.