Victorian agtech startup Drone-Hand has raised $720,000 in a pre-Seed spherical for its autonomous livestock administration platform. 

The elevate was led by US VC Radius Capital, supported by three native agribusiness traders

Gippsland-based Edward Barraclough based Drone-Hand in 2023, having grown up in NSW on a combined livestock property. The concept was impressed by an remark by his 80-year-old father.

“He appeared over my shoulder someday and mentioned, ‘If that drone might examine the inventory for me, I might keep on the farm longer.’ That’s the place it began,” Barraclough mentioned.

“Drone-Hand is about creating instruments that make life simpler for individuals like my dad, farmers who need to keep on the land and work smarter. Autonomous programs are the subsequent frontier in sensible, farmer-first innovation.”

Drone-Hand doing its factor, counting livestock and checking their well being

Drone-Hand got here by means of Farmers2Founders, the nationwide agtech accelerator that’s helped flip lots of of on-farm concepts into investable startups. It’s additionally scored a LaunchVic agtech grant, was named the AIIA Victoria StartUp of the 12 months, and gained the water, meals and agribiz class within the Australian Applied sciences Competitors final yr.

Barraclough mentioned Farmers2Founders was pivotal to his early progress. 

“Farmers2Founders gave us the training, community, and investor assist to speed up our imaginative and prescient,” he mentioned. 

“Their steering was instrumental in serving to us articulate the real-world affect of autonomous programs for agriculture.” 

The expertise combines machine studying, drone automation, and fixed-camera programs to ship real-time, insights into livestock location, welfare, and infrastructure. It function offline, so cloud connectivity isn’t a problem. It may well monitor and depend livestock, examine water and fences, and flag animal-welfare points, changing hours on the bike with minutes within the sky. 

Trials with JBS Australia have already validated 99.9% accuracy in livestock identification with considered one of their programs underneath real-world circumstances. Livestock mortality prices the sheep and cattle industries over $2 billion yearly, losses Drone-Hand is hoping to scale back.

The funding will go towards crew enlargement, gross sales and advertising and marketing functionality, and scaling industrial deployment throughout Australia over the subsequent 6–18 months.

Greater than 200 producers have already put their hand as much as give it a crack and the startup’s subsequent step is changing trials into prospects by means of on-farm demonstrations and strategic partnerships. 

The modular drone programs vary from transportable quadcopters for household farms to long-range Vertical Take-Off and Touchdown (VTOL) and “drone-in-a-box” fashions for twenty-four/7 operation.

Drone-Hand plans to develop into North and South America following its Australian rollout, focusing on large-scale operations in areas akin to Texas and Brazil, the place the expertise’s offline autonomy gives important benefits.