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26/03/2019
A truly innovative farm management software start-up, AgriWebb has come a long way since founder John Fargher pitched the business on stage at the inaugural Rabobank Farm2Fork Summit in 2016 when the company was only two years old.
When he returns to Sydney’s Cockatoo Island on March 28 this year for the 2019 F2F, John will be showing visitors to the Innovation Gardens how AgriWebb’s technology is transforming the way farmers are going about record keeping and farm management.
Since 2016, AgriWebb has grown its customer base from 500 farmers to over 2,500 today. This represents around 10% of the national herd and flock across Australia and covers about 10 million hectares, compared to the 1.8 million hectares under AgriWebb’s management less than three years ago.
But it’s not just Australian farmers who are now turning to AgriWebb – their customers are spread across five different countries and they have plans to expand into the US in the near future.
While Australia is their largest market, they also have customers in New Zealand and South Africa, and have a partnership in Brazil bringing in more customers.
Last year, through a round of investment, AgriWebb acquired a company in the UK, where they service another 1,000 farms.
With offices in both Australia and UK, their staff has grown from around 20 to about 40 across the two countries.
Just as impressive has been the growth in funding the company has attracted, rising from around $5 million in 2016 to just shy of $20 million today.
While Mr Fargher describes the size of the growth as ‘amazing for this sector’, it’s perhaps not surprising. As a fifth generation pastoralist, he believes he is well aware of the technological needs of farmers.
However, he doesn’t simply rely on his personal knowledge. He uses customer feedback and on farm visits to continually improve their product.
“Customer feedback is really around everything we build. This means, on average, we push out about 50 new updates a year,” Mr Fargher said.
“We also maintain and we will continue to maintain that everyone in the business, including all the development team, get on farm and meet our customers as regularly as possible to ensure we all understand the key pain points we are solving.”
Another reason for their success, Mr Fargher said, is their ‘Farm Success’ team.
“The point around that team is that we’re not just about support when there is an issue. We’re about making our farming customers more successful and how can we help them drive their business forward,” he said.
Mr Fargher said AgriWebb has also expanded its product range, realising a vision to link on farm and off farm tools.
They now have an Advisory product that allows ‘trusted advisors’ – such as bankers, accountants/business advisors and others along the supply chain – to log in and access their client’s information sitting within the AgriWebb Farmer product.
And in the UK, AgriWebb is working with the second largest beef processor on tools that Mr Fargher said ‘are having a huge impact in the supply chain side of things’.
The company has ongoing partnerships with pharmaceutical company Bayer and farm financial software supplier Figured, and is also working on other integrations at both a hardware and software level in areas such as water monitoring through a integration with Farmbot and a satellite imagery integration with Cibo Labs.
While development and growth has been rapid, Mr Fargher remembers what is was like in ‘the early days’ when he pitched AgriWebb at the first F2F and the business took out the People’s Choice Award.
“We got some great recognition out of that. It gave us some great exposure, and we managed to get some new customers directly from that event,” he said.
Looking ahead to this month’s F2F, which will continue to explore solutions for the future sustainability of the food and agri sector, Mr Fargher said feeding a growing population was obviously a huge challenge.
“We need to be more efficient in what we do, we need to be able to produce more from what we’ve got and we need to focus on transparency, traceability and food security,” he added.
“At AgriWebb, we have the ability to get right down to the consumer in some form or another to really build that trust and transparency and safety around food.
“Our vision is really driven at sustainable farming practices and that’s where our product adds value at the farm, and to a sustainable future as well.”