Headquartered in Las Vegas and founded in 2014, GroGuru is one such outstanding firm that helps farmers increase their revenue by increasing their crop yield. The company also helps them save water along with other crucial resources in the most sustainable manner.
About the Pivotal Journey
As complicated as humans are, we have two very basic essential needs: food and water. And as we know, those vital resources are being threatened due to climate change and a growing population.
Likely, GroGuru thinks the best way to make things better is to start from the ground up – and that’s why its team helps farmers. Founded in 2014 as an exciting AgTech company, GroGuru has been on a mission to help farmers to save water, grow more crops in a cost-effective way, and sequester more carbon in the soil by implementing strategic water management solutions.
The firm strongly believes that soil monitoring for optimal water management is necessary to yield enough crops to feed our planet, but farmers tend to struggle with making practical irrigation choices. And although soil monitoring methods are out there, they tend to have some problems of their own, and that is where GroGuru’s team believes that they can help.
The team at GroGuru feels that they are at the very early stages of what is expected to be a multi-decade-long growth market opportunity – expecting to surpass one million deployed acres within the planning cycle of the company.
The Leading Light of GroGuru
Patrick Henry is the CEO of GroGuru. He has been a senior executive and serial entrepreneur at four different startup companies with multiple exits. Previously, he has had CEO or senior roles at QuestFusion, Pictos Technologies, LinCom Wireless, LSI Logic, and C-Cube Microsystems. Earlier in his career, he also worked for AMD and Dow-Corning Corp. As the CEO of GroGuru, he drives the overall strategy and operational execution of the company. He is solely responsible for providing strategic leadership for the company by working with the Board and other management to establish long-range goals, strategies, plans, and policies.
Outstanding Services/ Products Delivered
GroGuru solution consists of a wireless underground soil sensor (WUGS), which is buried in the root zone for permanent installation. Using machine learning and With AI-based soil monitoring, the firm can determine root growth and depth, available moisture, whether the soil is sand or clay-based, and if the soil has a compaction
layers. The company’s insights platform works with our sensors to display real-time data to visualize the root zone and soil structure, a GPS farm-scale view, crop-specific irrigation template guides, and alternative field telemetry solutions for perennial crops and root vegetables. The company then presents this information in a simple, intuitive, farmer-friendly user interface that the farmer can access on their mobile device, tablet, or computer.
Notable Milestones Achieved
So far, GroGuru has deployed over 4,000 soil sensors across over 20 crop types in the the United States, established a dealer footprint that covers 6 million deployable acres, and acquired $620K in revenue in 2020 alone. This is a huge success in a very difficult economic environment. The company has now entered its third generation of software as a service and our third generation of the internet of things for farming products. It has formed key strategic partnerships with market leaders in the precision agriculture space and has many more in the queue eager to work with us.
On asking the CEO of GroGuru what is his driving force in life, he says, “My faith in God is very important to me. Always working hard to be a better man and strive for excellence. I have many mentors, and two who are both investors in GroGuru and successful serial entrepreneurs are Rory Moore, the CEO of EvoNexus, and Pieter van Rooyen, the CEO of Plano. They both provide me with mentorship, encouragement, and inspiration.”
Piece of Advice for Budding Professionals
Patrick advises young professionals in the industry and asserts, “Build a great team with the right business, technical, and market domain expertise. Establish a clear vision. Listen to and learn from customers and ecosystem partners. Learn how to sell the vision to investors. Be patient and persistent as you build the business.”
What’s Next?
GroGuru’s goal is to establish the GroGuru solution as the de facto standard for irrigation and water monitoring and management for commercial farming in the US and establish a significant global footprint. The team of the company is highly committed to taking GroGuru to this level or working with a strategic partner that can help to accelerate that vision.
