Interview with Felipe Hernandez, CEO Hexagro Group
By Helmuth Fuchs
Felipe Hernandez, CEO Hexagro Group in the interview
- on how he came up with the idea for Hexagro?
„It started with my bachelor thesis. I wanted to tackle the problem of Pesticide use in farming in Costa Rica.“
„How can we provide food for citizens without Pesticides? The answer is, using groundless methods. You can produce food in indoor environments without chemicals.“
- on what is needed to become a successful grower with Hexagro
„We have developed a product that does not require people to have experience, a lot of space or time.“
«The idea is to make farming educative, to make it fun and to make it digital.»
- on how big a part of a persons› nutrition can be covered with Hexagro
„The system is not going to feed a person completely, but it will allow our customers to have fresh products in their diet and it will change the dietary habits of the users.“
- on how sustainable the material lifecycle of the Hexagro gardens is
„We are using recycled plastics for the prototype. We are now redesigning our current system for implementing sustainable materials that can be incorporated into a circular economic model.“
- on the key markets and targeted clients
„We are now focusing on the business-to-business sector, especially restaurant, offices and hotels with a strong sustainable image. The next stepp will be an expansion into the business-to-consumer market.“
- on the ownership structure and investors
„We are a team of four co-founders of designers, engineers and gastronomes from the top universities in Italy. We haven’t had a seed round yet because we are waiting until next year for the industrialization of our products.“
- on the potential of a crowdfunding campaign
«We are now running a crowdfunding campaign on a European Union platform as part of the Horizon2020, called Katana.»
- on the growth plans for the company
„We are closing deals with our first pilots like Accor Hotels or Raiffeisen. We have talks with consumer goods suppliers like Coop Bau und Hobby for the commercialization of our products.“
- on the next product developments
„After having a robust industrialised version of our business configuration, we will develop the consumer product.“
«We are also develeoping concepts for the farming of mushrooms and insects.»
«The biggest vision would be to design products to grow food in space. For that we are in talks with ESA (European Space Agency).»
- on the benefits of participating in the Kickstart Accelerator program
«We have redefined our business model and have now a strong business plan. We have closed a pilot project with Raiffeisen, one of the Kickstart partners. We are also expanding our network of experts and institutions and start talks with business angels and venture funds.»
The interview was conducted with the support of the Kickstart Accelerator and digitalswitzerland
