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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Ava Byte

AVA Technologies Raises $2.6M for Its Countertop Gardening System

AVA Technologies, maker of the AVA Byte countertop smart gardening system, has raised a $2.6 million seed round (no pun intended) led by Vanedge Capital, according to BetaKit.

The AVA Byte is an all-in-one connected gardening appliance that uses a combination of soil-less seed pods, smart sensors, artificial intelligence and a smartphone app to guide you through the process of growing herbs, mushrooms and even tomatoes indoors. AVA CEO Valerie Song pitched her company as a Smart Kitchen Summit startup showcase finalist last year. You can see her presentation here:

This looks to be the first institutional round of funding for AVA, which has raised more than $130,000 on crowdfunding platform Indiegogo. To date, the company has raised $2.9 million.

An update from Song on the AVA Indiegogo page says that to celebrate the funding, AVA is giving away a free HD camera for their growing systems to all of their backers. She went on to say that the AVA Byte will start shipping this October.

The indoor smart garden space is certainly sprouting (Ed. note: Sorry). SproutsIO offers much of the same functionality as AVA and is supposed to ship this summer. Then there’s AeroGarden, which is available now.

GardenSpace Will Water Your Plants and Squirt Away Pests

Move over garden gnomes. GardenSpace, a new smart watering-camera-deterrent device for your garden on Kickstarter, is looking to stake a claim in garden beds to help home food growers improve their bounty (hat tip to Digital Trends).

You “plant” this solar-powered stationary device in your garden, connect it to a hose and the accompanying app to tell it what you are growing. GardenSpace has a 360 degree camera and thermal sensors to determine how much water each plant needs. The swiveling head and spout rotate and angle waterings to deliver the precise amounts of water required to keep everything in your garden healthy. The “smart” camera can even detect a pest such as a rodent and squirt water to shoo it away.

The people behind GardenSpace say they created the device to help aspiring gardeners yield better crops by taking the guesswork out of watering. Ideally, GardenSpace will reduce water consumption by eliminating over watering, while keeping plants more healthy through proper hydration.

What we can’t tell from the video is how much area one GardenSpace can handle, and how many you’d need to cover larger garden areas.

Regardless, helping people grow their own food is an admirable goal, and one that many companies are getting into. Elsewhere on Kickstarter, the creator of Roomba has Tertill, a mobile robot that goes through your garden to whack down weeds.

One trend we’ve seen up close and personal here at the Spoon is moving the whole garden process indoors. Both AVA Byte and Verdical were in the Startup Showcase at our recent Smart Kitchen Summit (Verdical even won the top prize). Each company creates self-contained indoor gardening systems that basically do all of the growing work for you.

With the campaign just a hundred or so dollars shy of its $25,000 goal, things are looking good for the GardenSpace. And anything that helps people grow their own food is a good thing (especially if it can replace those gnomes).

Smart Gardens Follow a Familiar Business Path

Entrepreneurs behind the recent raft of smart indoor gardens are following the digital commerce wisdom of those who understand the value of subscription-based businesses. The old, “buy the camera for cheap and we will sell you lots of film” concept has been successful for companies such as Keurig and Nespresso in maintaining multiple revenue streams.

Ava Byte, an Indiegogo project billed as “the world’s best automated smart garden,” may be the most trouble-free indoor growing appliance on the market. The Vancouver, B.C. startup has taken many of the features of its competitors such as Aerogarden and taken them to a new level. For example, the growing pods are soil free and include the necessary nutrients for optimal growth. The kit, with the standard smart garden goodies such as a base and grow light, also has an HD camera to monitor growing and sensors for precise watering. After getting Ava Bytes gardens into the hands of consumers, the company will be able to realize money from purchases of additional pods for about $6 per unit.

AVA Byte: World's Best Automated Indoor Smart Garden. Get #AVAByte Now at AVAgrows.com

Ava Byte also jumps on the voice-based smart home assistant bandwagon by being compatible with amazon’s Echo and Apple’s HomeKit. The company is led by Valerie Song and Chase Ando, a former chef, born out of Startup Weekend Vancouver 2015. Song was frustrated by her inability to keep plants alive in her sunlight-challenged apartment. She teamed up with engineers, designers and horticulturists to develop the smart garden that brings a bit of nature indoors.

Another difference between Ava Byte and others in the market is that it claims to be able to grow more than the usual herbs, lettuces, and small tomatoes. According to the company’s crowdfunding page, it can grow peppers, berries and mushrooms in addition to the standard fare.

The company has surpassed its $30,000 goal by 125% and expects to ship in March 2018.

The smart growing pods are an interesting component of the smart garden space. Even though Aerogarden pods are affordable, there are a number of hacks that show how to inexpensively make replacements pods. Using proprietary growing pods does offer the ability for smart garden companies to license their technology to third parties, but could be a turn off to the DIY crowd.

Going from super high-tech to cool low-tech, another crowdsourced entrant in the indoor garden space is from Urban Leaf and is billed as the world’s smallest garden. The product is a growing pod insert that slips into the neck of a bottle (green or brown preferred). First, the bottle is filled up to the neck with water and the insert is popped in. The pod is filled with additional water and then placed in a sunny spot. An interesting component of this option is that it reuses bottles you already have (wine, soda, etc.) and does not require investment in additional containers.

The company founders are Nathan Littlewood and Robert Elliott. Nate worked in the finance industry before leaving to become a chef and took cooking classes around the world. Rob is a PhD whose focus is on Vegetated Infrastructure. After meeting Nate in 2016, the pair began working on urban food growing systems.

Kickstarter - The World's Smallest Garden

Urban Leaf has an all or nothing goal of $40,000. As of June 14, with less than a week to go, the offering is a little under $7,000 short of reaching its goal.

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