Headquarter In: La Jolla , CA
Founded in Year: 2014
Employees Headcount: 11-50
With digitalization seeping into every industry, farming is one thing that is as traditional as it gets. But bringing innovation in such an industry is a step forward to revolutionized farming. And with his vision to make it happen, Patrick Henry started GroGuru, a strategic water management company for the smart farmer.
Business Iconic is proud to feature Patrick Henry in this issue of The Most Inspiring Business Leaders to Follow in 2022.
An Ambitious Leader-
Patrick Henry is a serial entrepreneur that has been running technology companies for the last 20 years. He’s had multiple exists including an IPO on NASDAQ that led to a $1B valuation.
Mr. Henry is an expert on building world-class teams, building strategic partnerships, and his ability to clearly articulate complex technologies into something that a layperson can understand. He has built multiple billion-dollar businesses in areas where an innovative technology is just emerging.
Mr. Henry is the CEO of GroGuru. He drives the overall strategy and operational execution for an exciting Agriculture Technology (AgTech) company that is changing the way that we grow crops by using an innovative Artificial Intelligence (AI) enabled software as a service (SaaS) for strategic irrigation management for commercial farmers.
Walking Through the Pandemic- Challenges at Large-
The pandemic turned down the working systems for the entire world, with a very few loopholes in it. For Patrick, the key major economic downturn he learned during the pandemic was that to survive now and thrive later. The second thing he learned because of the economic shut-down was to use it as an opportunity to grow market share and expand your market channel presence.
Downturns present opportunities as other companies struggle, and some go out of business. It is during the downturn that GroGuru launched its stand-alone SaaS business that uses third party hardware already purchased by farmers. Because GroGuru already had a geographically distributed team, the transition to virtual was relatively seamless.
About GroGuru-
“GroGuru is focused on helping farmers implement strategic water management for the smart farm.”
The company deploys soil sensors that measure things like soil moisture, temperature and salinity at various root depth of crops. GroGuru wirelessly transmits this data to the Cloud where they add additional information to make AI-based recommendations to farmers about when and how much to irrigate their crops. Their recommendation engine accounts for the data that they get from the soil sensors, but also crop type, weather, soil type, and additional data.
How the Farmers Manage Water Today?
Farmers use a variety of methods for making water management decision, but only about 10 percent of farmers in the U.S. are using soil sensors today, according to the FDA. Farmers that are using this technology are seeing increased crop yield and more efficient use of water and other resources, However, nearly all soil moisture sensors in the market today use cables from the sensors in the ground to the above ground telemetry. This requires annual installation and removal of the sensors in field crops like corn, soybeans, cotton, wheat, sorghum, and alfalfa. Even in fruit and nut trees and other perennial crops, many farmers do not want any cable-based systems around their crops during harvest. GroGuru solves this problem by eliminating these cables.
Why the GroGuru Solution?
GroGuru supplies an innovative hardware-enabled subscription-based solution to farmers that enables optimal irrigation. GroGuru’s 100 percent wireless underground system, or WUGS, enables a permanent installation of soil sensors, even in annual field crops like corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton and sorghum, that have a destructive harvest. GroGuru’s WUGS-based systems can be buried below the till depth and communicate through several feet of soil wirelessly, thus eliminating the need for the sensors to be annually installed and removed for seeding and harvesting, respectively, for these annual crops.
The GroGuru Solution Enables a Permanent Installation
GroGuru enables a permanent installation model for soil sensors using our breakthrough Wireless Underground System (WUGS) technology, which dramatically reduces total cost of ownership, improves scalability, and gives farmers year-round data that is critical for strategic irrigation management.
The GroGuru solution is buried below the till depth and has a five-year battery life. It communicates via our proprietary wireless underground system, without cables, to an easy to remove LoRa network bridge, or directly to the cloud using 4G cellular communications from the field. In the case of LoRa deployments, base unit bridges from LoRa to 4G cellular and transmits the data to the cloud. Over time, we will add other information about soil type, crop type and weather and apply machine learning to make recommendations to farmers about when and how much to irrigate. We provide the strategic irrigation recommendations via a simple user interface.
The GroGuru cable-based solution also provides a permanent installation for perennial crops, and offers an industry leading price-performance with the GroGuru soil sensor technology that measures soil moisture, salinity and temperature. We provide a choice to these farmers of a low-cost solution using cables, or the WUGS system where no cables are present. Both solutions offer a significant value proposition to farmers with a payback period typically of less than one growing season.
Mr. Patrick- Donning the Achievements!
Mr. Henry has built companies and businesses that address the consumer electronics and communications markets and is now focused on building a company in the agriculture technology space. He is a former contributor at FastCompany, Tech.Co, Entrepreneur, The Huffington Post, and other publications. Previously featured on CNBC, Bloomberg Television, and in Forbes.
He is the winner of the 2008 Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year for Technology, San Diego Daily Transcript 2008 Top Influentials in the Technology Industry, and 2011 San Diego Business Journal Most Admired CEO. Mr. Henry has raised over $200 million in equity financing for his companies and been directly involved in over $2 billion of M&A transactions.
Patrick’s Advice to the Budding Entrepreneurs- “There are four key things that have really helped me in my career: 1) Always be learning – treat every situation with a ‘beginner’s mind’ and assume you can learn something that is of value; (2) Don’t quit before the miracle happens – if you are always quitting, you are always starting over – there is no substitute for patience and persistence and having a ‘no quit’ attitude when it comes to building new business based on innovative technologies; (3) Build great teams that complement your skill set and areas of expertise, then listen to them; (4) Set ambitious and challenging goals, focus on the WHAT, and then leave room for Creative Intelligence to guide you in the HOW.”