Clarifruit

This interview details Clarifruit, an indoor farming technology company based in the United States. The interview is with Elad Mardix, CEO at Clarifruit.

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What is the origin story of Clarifruit?

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When Avi Schwartzer picked a surprisingly bland clementine from a tree in his backyard, he had a eureka moment that would eventually lead him to co-found Clarifruit. Finding no end-to-end tool on the market that could accurately perform QC of fruits and vegetables, he set about developing one himself.

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Along the way, he discovered that the way fruit and vegetables are picked and evaluated has hardly changed in decades. While digital transformation is revolutionizing every industry under the sun, fruit and vegetable QC has been left in the shade.

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Clarifruit was founded in early 2018. Today, we have over 30 employees globally. We are extremely proud of our marquee customers, composed of some of the world’s top retailers and brands in our supply chain. 

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What are some of the biggest challenges facing Clarifruit in the future?

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We face two key challenges in our journey:

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• Technology risk: Clarifruit continues to invest heavily in R&D and we are currently focused on Level-3 automation, which means the ability of our proprietary, computer-vision technology to automatically identify defects on a piece of produce. This feature will go beyond external attributes, such as color & size, which we already support. The good news is that we are in the final stages of commercializing our first produce category with level-3 automation - Citrus - currently trialed by our design partners globally. However, we would want to market it globally and then go and repeat that exercise for all other produce categories out there…

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• Traditional industry’s rate of adoption: while our game-changing technology has been well received by the industry and adopted commercially by some of the world’s largest produce brands, such as Dole, Sunkist, Zespri, T&G and many others, our long-term vision is to deploy our software along the entire fresh produce supply chain in order to standardize the way quality is evaluated and reduce waste. We have done phenomenally well on the Marketing Co/Packer-shipper segment of the market, and are now expanding downstream towards the wholesaler and grocery retailer segment. 

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What is unique about Clarifruit compared to competitors? 

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Clarifruit is unique in multiple ways:

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We are the world’s only AI-powered Quality Control (QC) software for fresh produce. Our platform powers QC for 1/3 of the top-20 brands globally today. That’s because Clarifruit is the only solution that can convert a manual, subjective and inconsistent inspection process to an automatic, objective and consistent through our proprietary AI technology.

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Our "Clarifruit language”, which digitalizes the quality specs in use by our customers, creates a common language for the entire supply chain, thus reducing the risk of quality mismatch and rejection b/w a buyer & a seller. 

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Real-time actionable insights: Our big data & analytics platform generates real-time info that enables our customers to optimize matching of supply quality to a customer spec and prioritizes vendor evaluation based on quality performance. It capitalizes on our distinct software architecture and computer-vision capabilities, generating unique insights that other platforms in the market are unable to. 

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What are some other relevant metrics of the company (amount of customers, key crops, team size, etc.)?

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Our commitment to growth is evident in the number of new clients we welcomed aboard in 2023- a staggering 50% increase. 

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This not only speaks to our expanding market presence but also underscores the trust and satisfaction our clients place in us.

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Our team has grown by 20%, welcoming new talents from different corners of the globe. This growth is a testament to our dedication to building a diverse and skilled workforce.

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What are some goals in 2024 and beyond for Clarifruit?

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Looking ahead, we have plans to integrate AI even further. Currently, we are looking into the possibility of enhancing natural language capabilities to augment the work of inspectors and QA managers. As Ruby Boyarski, our Co-founder and CTO, puts it, we are looking to use ChatGPT “to analyze the data automatically and potentially offer ways to improve the grading configuration or highlight specific trends for QA managers”.

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We also plan to broaden the scope of defect detection, to encompass more fresh produce categories. 

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How can people connect with you or learn more about Clarifruit?

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We invite you to experience these exciting new capabilities first-hand. Join us at Fruit Logistica 2024 booth in Hall 3.1 C-35 for a live demonstration, scheduled daily at 3 pm. This is an opportunity to witness the future of fresh produce quality control and explore how Clarifruit is redefining industry standards.

You can also visit our website https://www.clarifruit.com/

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