A few weeks ago, some startups from our community received a Student Start-Up Loan! The Student Start-Up Loan is offered by StartLife and StartHub Wageningen to students with a promising business idea. The loan gives students the opportunity to accelerate their first business activities. In the upcoming weeks, you can expect a little interview with each of the startups. What is their company’s mission? Why did they become an entrepreneur? Where will they use the loan for and what are their future plans? In this week’s interview, we spoke to Nikolaos Alfieris, the founder of FarmVent!
FarmVent is an agri-tech start-up that focuses on vertical farming, developing turnkey modular automated farms for herbs and leafy greens. Growth is controlled by a combination of Internet of Things (IoT) technology, machine learning and data science. “We want to enable growers and retailers to grow in-store everywhere, minimizing the food miles. We believe – now more than ever – that food production should get closer to the consumer, with transparent procedures & food security without food waste. We are passionate about innovation and sustainability and by combining these two things in our project we want to create a more sustainable future in the supply chain of herbs,” Nikolaos explains.
Visualisation of the FarmVent in-store vending machines.
It all started when Nikolaos decided to combine the MSc Track Entrepreneurship with his MSc Biosystems Engineering at the WUR. “I followed courses about business for agri-food and how to get from your idea to a business plan. This gave me a push to start something. Also a role played the support of StartHub and the Realisation Bootcamp, with mentoring and guidance in this whole entrepreneurial trip,” he says.
- The FarmVent team
The startup achieved some milestones so far. The FarmVent team participated in this year’s WUR Urban Greenhouse Challenge 2; where student teams were challenged to come up with a concept to bring professional food production back into urban neighbourhoods, integrating social, economic, environmental and technical aspects. The teammates won the Partners’ Prize with their proposal. Last month, FarmVent represented the WUR in the Dutch 4TU Impact Challenge, in which teams from 4 technical universities in the Netherlands presented their innovation, competing for prizes. What are Nikolaos and his team up to next? “The Student Start-up Loan we received, gave us a push in finishing our prototype. Now we are ready to plan and run our first pilot with customers,” he says. “We hope to be able to have our first instalment with retailers by 2021.” The StartHub team looks forward to seeing your startup develop!
- Tim Daalderop hands over the Student Start-up Loan on behalf of StartHub during the ceremony.
Curious to find out more about FarmVent? Check their website here.
Want to know more about the possibilities of the Student Start-Up Loan? Click here.