This is one in a series of interviews with CFIN member companies that have successfully applied for and received funding.
Toronto, ON-based Vivid Machines developed a multispectral computer vision platform to digitize fruit production. The shoe-box size device mounts onto an ATV or tractor to capture plant-level data below the canopy and across the farm, providing real-time insights to help fruit growers produce more fruit on existing acreage and reduce food waste. The company started with apples but will be moving into other fruits such as grapes and kiwifruit. Vivid Machines received $810,920 in funding for a project to scale fruit volumes and transparency across the fruit supply chain.
We talked to Jenny Lemieux, founder and CEO of Vivid Machines, to learn more about the company and its plans.
Q: What is your company’s mission?
A: Our mission is to revolutionize fruit production and the entire supply chain to help farmers solve food security globally.
Q: Why did you apply for this funding and how will you use it?
A: We applied for this funding so that we can extend the application of our orchard yield predictions and insights to different fruit supply chain partners to help reduce food waste and ensure more fresh fruit gets to market.
Q What excites you most about working in this area of the food industry?
A: My co-founder and I are passionate about food and agriculture, and also have backgrounds in physical, machine learning, and software products. We talked to hundreds of farmers, agronomists, and fruit and vegetable growers, and discovered this interesting problem in permanent crops that we thought we were particularly suited to solve.
Q: Why is collaboration so important for accelerating innovation in the food industry? Is it difficult to find good collaborating partners, and what would make the process easier?
A: We’ve been fortunate to meet and work with industry experts in the fruit industry and in the machine learning space. These collaborations have accelerated our milestones and growth. We are very excited to be collaborating with CFIN and with the connections we will make.
Q: Please comment on the importance of public funding to help companies clear innovation hurdles and access leveraged funds.
A: Public funding has helped us develop prototypes of our technology and have given us runway to test and validate our results before it was commercially viable. Without public funding, we would not be where we are today.
Q: Looking ahead, what’s on the horizon for your company?
A: We plan on extending our technology to other tender fruit such as grapes, kiwifruit and pears.
Q: What are your passions or hobbies outside of work?
A: I’m a proud soccer mom!
Q: If you had to pick one person to make you a meal, who would you choose?
A: My dad.
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