By the year 2030, the world’s population will increase from today’s 6 billion people to 8.4 billion people, who will need 150% of food resources, as per a report by UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation. Now this will ring alarm bells as the general perception is that food resources are depleting faster, but while the former fact is true, there is another aspect as well. Technology is making whirlwind changes in agriculture sector and scope of farming to produce food is becoming better each day.
N.Thing, a South Korea based Agri-Tech company is working towards encouraging everyone to adopt farming by developing unique smart plant products.
The company’s motto is to connect things and people with technology and to make everyone self-sufficient farmers.
N.thing was started in 2014 by company’s CEO Leo Kim and his fellow team members from the Hanyang University. The team wanted to give people a convenient technology to take care of houseplants. They developed Planty, a Wi-Fi connected plant pot, that connects with its caretaker via a smartphone. Planty’s launch helped the team raise angel funds from MousQ, Angel Club, SparkLabs Accelerator. N.Thing became a finalist at the 2013 Google K-Start-up Competition. By 2018, N.Thing has expanded its product range and now even offers a 40 feet Smart Farm Cube.
Products from N.Thing
- Planty Cube launched in 2017 is an internet connected container farm. It is about 40 feet long and tall cube indoor farm that runs by LED technology. The smart farmer can have real time monitoring system through IoT sensors that collects cultivation data. There is option of upgrading the software.
- Planty Square, also launched in 2017, is a modular hydroponic kit. It connects each module and shares water. Users can connect as many plants as they want with the square. They can grow green plants and herbs to make delicious food. Each Square consists of four Pickcells, which has special nutrient-rich sponge. This is a simple and effective gardening method.
- Planty that was launched in 2015 is world’s first Internet-connected pot. With Planty, the user can monitor atmospheric temperature, moisture in soil and ambience light around plants. You can water plants in Planty from anywhere, anytime. It comes in a small size and brings in amazing joy to grow plants
- Life is a smart gardening journal app meant for plant lovers and garderners, who want to record gardening activities. It was the first product N.Thing had launched. The users can record weather, location, information about gardening events, updates etc. and share it on social media.
N.Thing is certainly developing for the future of smart farming. Their unique products have been bringing in almost $ 3 million worth of revenues annually. The company which specialises in the agriculture sector has offices in Seoul and New York. N.Thing’s future vision is to connect people with nature using advance technology. N.Thing dreams of a world where everyone can become a farmer and with interesting products like theirs, the dream might come true!
The startup is expanding to the Middle-East and got 2.55 billion won or $2.2 million in series A funding from domestic venture capital and individual investors in July 2019.
