Off the back of a successful stage 1 grant, Back Paddock was recently awarded a stage 2 grant of $449,109 from the Federal Government’s Entrepreneurs’ Programme Accelerating Commercialisation service.
Back Paddock have spent years developing and trialling a novel planning and recording digital platform for farmers and their advisors to work together for improved productivity, risk management and profitability by optimising the soil, water, plant and animal elements of mixed farming.
Their Opterra solution:
- Allows farmers and their advisors collaborate on a single platform to manage mixed farming operations with real time and forecast information on soil, water, plant and animal aspects;
- Provides a simple conformity and reporting system for compliance with regulations and best practice management practices; and
- Will permit farmers to integrate with carbon accounting or trading platforms for additional automatic revenue from soil carbon credits.
The funded project will expand Back Paddock’s Opterra solution for mixed farm management for better user experience and data management, ensuring the solution works offline and on all devices, and incorporating a ‘Reef’ module for assisting compliance and reporting of soil budgets under new run-off regulations.
Back Paddock worked closely with Accelerating Commercialisation facilitators to develop and present a competitive project which resulted in their success in securing matched, non-dilutionary funding. Certain aspects of their project were particularly well aligned to the requirements of Accelerating Commercialisation:
- The impressive team with a good balance of skills and well-established relationships in the agricultural industry as well as experience in commercialising technology;
- Strong novelty and IP supported by evidence of market pull from constant market engagement ensuring that Opterra had a compelling value proposition.
The follow-on support from the Accelerating Commercialisation program will enable Back Paddock to finalise the Opterra solution with necessary features and undertake trials, the results of which will advance customer discussions and onboarding as well as a future capital raise and global expansion.
Visit here for more information about Accelerating Commercialisation.
