In Toulouse, agritech faces a sluggish commercial start
Toulouse and its region new bastions of agritech? One of the first trips by the new Minister of Digital, Jean-Noël Barrot, was to Toulouse in the summer of 2022 to present the first promotion of the Agri 20 program, in other words the 20 most promising French startups in the agriculture. And five are in the Toulouse region: Agreenculture, Micropep, Naïo Technologies, Asclepios Tech and Green Dot Technologies. In addition to their sector of activity, they all have another point in common: a sluggish commercial start.
Founded in 2011, the designer of autonomous agricultural robots Naïo Technologies is experiencing a real commercial start since 2017. As for A green culturewhich was born in 2016, and despite a turnover slightly above one million euros in 2021, the company which has put a solution to make agricultural tools autonomous has returned to the bosom of the manufacturer Pellenc. Micropep (process for GMO-free crops) and Green Spot Technologies (upcycling of food residues) do not generate any sales themselves at the moment and ensure their development thanks to subsidies and investors. Finally, Asclepios Tech is currently recording its very first sales, which do not yet allow it self-financing.
“For classic digital startups, development takes three to five years and commercial take-off takes place, while for agritech and particularly agricultural robotics, we are talking about seven to ten years to set up commercial development and so many financial needs to ensure behind… So I welcome the recent fundraising of Naïo Technologies which will allow it to continue to grow, ”comments Sandrine Jullien-Rouquié, president of French Tech Toulouse.
Innovation always at the rendezvous
The oldest agritech in Toulouse, Naïo Technologies has ” only “ 300 robots currently in service. ” Our goal is to democratize agricultural robotics in France and abroad. With the fundraising, we will invest in communication and sales to develop our network of distributors. About thirty distributors in Europe and North America currently. The goal is to have 1,000 robots sold in 2025 », announces Gaëtan Séverac, the general manager of the company.
Raising awareness and the democratization of new technologies is the same fight that another Toulouse agritech is leading, Abeliowhich develops a decision support platform on several verticals (water management, herbicides, etc.) “Today, we work with just over 10,000 farmers, for around 100,000 hectares in France and Belgium. In particular, we make it possible to increase farmers’ yields by 5% while using synthetic fertilizers. Also, we work on 10,000 hectares of cereals and in 84% of cases we have succeeded in reducing the use of herbicides thanks to our platform », Details Grégoire Dupré, CEO of Abelio.
The manager is also preparing a fundraiser of one million euros to calmly pursue his commercial development. He also hopes to reach one million euros in turnover by the end of 2023. Abelio plans in particular to approach players in viticulture and arboriculture. If Naïo Technologies is present on the first market, it intends to apprehend the second with possibly a new range of robots presented in the near future, always with the same logic of reducing the use of chemical products and automating repetitive tasks.
Need to reassure farmers
Their desire to innovate is therefore not hampered by sluggish commercial start-ups, on the contrary. For Grégoire Dupré, as for Gaëtan Séverac, the problem of the commercial equation of their agritech does not come so much from the price of their solution.
“In his life, a farmer, on average, a right to 40 trials and errors assuming that a crop is a year. It’s different from business software where you can do 40 trial and error in the same day. The farmer has a fairly cautious approach to risk management because he constantly manages uncertainty (weather, selling price, production price through his fertilizers, etc.), analyzes the general manager of the designer of agricultural robots autonomous.
There are experienced farmers who see all the benefits of adopting our tools and there are young farmers who are more fond of new technologies who will go there cautiously because they are at the start of their career and they want to ramp up their skills. agriculture before moving on to agricultural optimization. But once they embrace our products, they don’t back down. Faced with various risks, farmers need to be reassured and convinced, as Gaêtan says. They only believe what they see. They sometimes need 2 or 3 seasons, even 4 to be seduced and tell others about it. »adds the entrepreneur behind Abelio.
Moreover, both share the observation that the agricultural world is ” very fond » new technologies, despite little or no room for error. But Abelio, as Naïo Technologies relies on their users, the best possible ambassadors for “accelerate this acceptance of new technologies in the agricultural world. »
Today, according to Sandrine Jullien-Rouquié, ” agricultural start-ups represent 19% of members of French Tech Toulouse and this is changing positively because there is a lot of talk about food sovereignty, with dedicated funding mechanisms “.