IRRIOT

This interview details IRRIOT, an indoor farming technology company based in Sweden. The interview is with Johan Wendt, CEO and Co-Founder of IRRIOT.

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What is the origin story of IRRIOT?

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Mikhail, our CTO, was working for Ericsson for +25 years and he is an expert in wireless data communication. He was looking for areas that had been neglected in the IoT revolution. After looking into irrigation it was obvious that this was a space where not much had happened for the last 20 years.

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Mikhail wanted to create a holistic solution that brought irrigation into the digitalized era. Wireless sensors existed in abundance but this only gave the farmer tons of data that still needed to be handled manually. There simply was not any wireless automation system with advanced sensor control designed for professional horticulture, until now.

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

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We are still a small company but our sales are growing very fast(+250% last financial year) and with this of course challenges come with increased sourcing of components, increased production, and intensified workload for the team. These are challenges that we happily embrace and this far nothing we cannot handle.

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What is unique about IRRIOT compared to competitors?

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Where we truly excel is our sophisticated wireless sensor-based irrigation automation. Data is everything, but without automated processing of the data and suitable decisions and actions automatically taken then data is just a headache. We dedicated tons of developing hours and funds to make sure that this is where we are at the forefront.

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On top of this, we have an extremely advanced system that has been packaged in a very user friendly way. E.g.

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• The customers can handle the installation themselves, no special education is needed.
• With one single controller you can completely wireless with a range of up to 5km automate everything you need for horticulture - valves, pumps, fertigation, filters etc.
• Our software is very self-explanatory and intuitive. We created it in very close dialogue with our users.
• The system is updated automatically over the air without any involvement from the users.
• IRRIOT can be installed anywhere and everything can be runned solely on solar power.

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What are some other relevant metrics of the company (production quantity, team size, etc.)?

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We have around 100 installations in 25 countries. Our customers are everything from producers of high value crops(soft fruits, almonds, berries etc), nurseries, sports arenas and public areas.

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We have a core team of people with much outsourced e.g. assembly and cloud development, this makes sure that we can quickly ramp up both the production and development of new features if needed.

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We have a global network of agents, distributors, and resellers - if we get requests from countries without local representation we serve the customer directly.

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What are some goals in 2024 and beyond for IRRIOT?

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We will continue to grow our sales, the aim is to at least double during 2024. We are constantly starting collaborations with new partners and our network continues to grow. We can see a trend where resellers of irrigation automation want to leave the bigger wirebased brands and move over to wireless. The service and close communication are something our partners really appreciate.

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We always have several integration projects both on the software and hardware side, and the scope of IRRIOT always continues to grow.

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

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The easiest way is to go to our site, www.irriot.com. My personal number is there. Either drop a line on WhatsApp, through our contact form, or give us a call.

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