The acquisition of the local start-up Dymaxion Labs by the DonMario Group (GDM) is a very positive message for the entire AgTech ecosystem Local. It is well known in the business world that there are many who undertake, but success is reserved for very few.
For an entrepreneur, success is defined when, after many years of hard sacrifices, he manages to sell his company to a large local company or even when he manages to reach the long-awaited Public Offering of Stocks (IPO). The iconic image of exultant entrepreneurs ringing the bell at the NYSE (New York Stock Exchange) so often reflected in series and films is the paradigm of success in the business world.
According to an exhaustive survey coordinated by the Austral University in Argentina, There are more than 200 companies that make up the AgTech ecosystem. Each of them represents the dream of power contribute to more efficient agriculture, more accurate and more sustainable. We are dealing with a particularly young ecosystem (their average age is just 6 years) and therefore it is not surprising that -for now- success stories are very rare.
That is why, in this environment and in this Argentina, it is particularly remarkable news that one of the most emblematic companies of Argentine agriculture, none other than GDM, has completed the acquisition of Dymaxion Labs, a young start-up founded by two young entrepreneurs. (Federico Baile Y Damiano Silvani) in 2017. The fact that none of them had previous experience in the agricultural sector does not make this news even more relevant.
How could it be otherwise, Federico and Damián They met while working on a digital real estate portal in March 2015.. Federico was the first data scientist hired to take full advantage of the algorithms developed by Damián. For two and a half years they worked together until Damián left in June 2017 followed by Federico a few months later. At the end of 2017 they had already created Dymaxion Labs.
They immediately started the incubation process for the city of Buenos Aires (an excellent program known as INCUBATE) where they discovered his vision: extract valuable insights from geospatial information for large spatial extents.
Satellite images, an increasingly used input
In a world where satellite imagery is rapidly becoming a commodity, they realized the opportunity was at hand. help to help generate value from them. In the same year they received their first major award, in this case from the hands of none other than UNICEF Innovation Fund.
Federico and Damián’s first goal was to help protect nature with the help of satellite information. Associated with bid (Inter-American Development Bank) and the Undersecretariat for Information Technologies of the city of Manaus in Brazil images of 11,000 km2 were processed to understand deforestation patterns originated from the development of informal settlements.
A short time later, in collaboration with the Peruvian space agency CONIDA and the chapter of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Lima, they developed a algorithm that activates the first alternatives when it detects illegal mining in an area of over 15,000 hectares.
The landing in the agricultural market -a market completely unknown to them until then- didn’t take place until the year 2019 And in the midst of a pandemic. In a very short time they have learned to understand and interpret agricultural messages from the sky. Quickly, they were able to recognize a barley crop from a wheat crop from a satellite (something that is especially difficult for an agronomist to do from a truck), assess its health, and predict their performance. and gradually the doors of the sector began to open after appreciating the precise and detailed estimates of the Dymaxion Labs team.
GDM was one of his first customers and quickly they saw something in this group of entrepreneurs which by now was already a group of 10 people. after more than 6 months of negotiations the acquisition of the company created by Federico and Damián is completed.
Typically, when these situations arise in the industry, the “buyers” are incorporated by the “buyer” group. This was not the case in this case. In a innovative decision but full of strategy and intelligence, Dymaxion laboratories will become the group’s digital company. Dymaxion Labs employees will not transition to GDM, but some of their employees will join the “new” Dymaxion Labs. Fascinating experiment to achieve the marriage between digital culture and agriculture.
In this very difficult moment for Argentina, this news is a huge boost for Argentina’s young AgTech ecosystem. From now on, many of the thousands of young people who are active in the 200 companies and who dream of a new agriculture every day have a model to inspire and a reference to continue working. Likewise, I am sure that from here many of the disbelievers and agnostics of the digital revolution in agriculture will be encouraged to analyze this opportunity with different eyes.
Source: Clarin
