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Brazil’s economy is the largest of Latin America and agriculture is a big part of the reason why. Challenges ahead of Brazil are big. What is the most productive way in which agriculture crops can be sprayed and kept in good shape? Well certainly not with the old-fashioned planes. Now there is a new more effective and precise way to do it – with a drone. That’s right drones. Today we are together with one of our finalists for the Global Conference, the founder of ARPAC Eduardo Goerl.
THE STORY
Inspiration for the starting ARPAC came from an unfortunate accident. Eduardo is a professional pilot and used to work for LATAM airlines. While he was giving training to one of his students on how to pilot a plane that sprays on agriculture crops the engine was set on fire. To everyone’s luck nobody was hurt but this made Eduardo think about what can be done to prevent this from happening to other people. Couple of years later he already had his first drone that would spray on crops. Together with the other co-founder Cristiano Silveira they took a long year to research and develop their idea. In the beginning of 2016 a newborn came called ARPAC!
HOW IT WORKS
ARPAC created two drones for agricultural spraying. They can take up to 50kg of spraying product on top of them. This way they are light enough to fly really close to the crops something conventional spraying plane could never do. Not to mention how dangerous it is for pilots to fly the plane way too close to the crops. Even though a plane can carry a lot more weight it never takes off with a full-load with an ARPAC drone you are sure it will be always to the maximum capacity.
“With ARPAC drones you can achieve maximum efficiency and precision with no risk for the pilot’s life”
To fill in the tank of the drones takes such a short time that Eduardo jokingly compares it to Formula 1. Remember how at the pit stops the mechanics put oil in the bolids in milliseconds to achieve maximum precision? Well, using the ARPAC drones is kind of the same! The drone has a pre-assigned mission and trajectory where and how much to spray on the crops.
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SUCCESS
Success for ARPAC is not too far away. According to Eduardo all they have left to do is to get their commercial model in place. The business model of the startup is to sell directly to B2B customers, bio farmers and producers. And guess what? Their first customer is already there, a bio farm in Sao Paulo which is successfully using their product. As we know in Brazil winter is coming so right in the beginning of September is when the next round for ARPAC to spray on the crops.
CHALLENGES
Everything sounds perfect for ARPAC so what are the obstacles that the company? The most important one is to implement their business model in the upcoming months. ARPAC is currently offered as a service. If you need agriculture crop spraying just give a call to ARPAC and their team will come directly to you and do the job with precision. To try to work with as many farms as possible they will need to grow their business even further more. However, we are absolutely sure ARPAC will be the next big thing on the agricultural market.
CONNECTIONS
ARPAC is currently in an acceleration program and is already exchanging a lot of information with peers in the IT industry. However, they will still need some help to expand and reach the target market in Brazil. Do you think you might be the person they are looking for? Is your passion tech and agriculture, and you would like to invest in the Brazilian startup? Leave a note at corrinke@gitr.co and we’ll put you through!