Yesterday my son turned to 1. At the same day we have released β version of AGRIBUDDY, Agriculture data control service for under developing country, with Google Play. We struggled to develop it for 1 year and half but finally we did it.

2010, I have moved to Cambodia. And 2011 the next year, I and Jiro who is my partner and co-head and other team mates established HUGS. What we put our hands on right after the establishment was agriculture. I literally run around jungles in Cambodia to find ideal land to do farm and found 1000 hectares of land. We cultivate it and was getting ready to begin real farming. However, the result was so Cambodia like. We were thrown into the situation of “Sorry! I do not understand at all but there is no one to put responsibility on”. I don’t write a detail because it is too complicated but anyway, It costed significant amount of cash to cultivate and we were not able to use the land at all.

I could not stop there. Never. So, I changed the strategy to cultivate a forest into a farm. I found some land to rent. Then we started cassava farming in nearly 1,000 hectares of land, again. We divide the land into 25 hectares each and positioned dozens of farm managers and hundreds of labours in each plot. And let them work various tasks at the same time. A size of the farm was vast. There were number of plots. Farm managers send us some report. We could know what is happening but we couldn’t “understand” what is really going on. It was such a dilemma. I continue the operation wondering how others are controlling their farms. To be honest, I couldn’t even tell where I actually was in the farm at that time. It was hard time physically and mentally.

As I struggle, flood that occurred in 2012 attacked east of Thailand and West of Cambodia brutally. The flood of course reached to our farm which expand to the border. Farm was devastated and the emails that farm managers looked spam mail because so many mails are sent to me  from all the managers reporting the damage with pictures.

This picture, that picture, all were capturing a flood.

I could tell that there are damage. But I could not understand where is actually damaged and how bad. I know it is like “Oh my gosh. Something is just so wrong.” Sure yes. But I could not understand the situation with precise numbers or amount at all. I told our manager to draw a map so, it might be easier to understand.

I just told myself “No way. I will never be able to do farming properly”.

“Why no one wonder this is wrong? Why no one question this inconvenience and try to change?”.

Well, I thought that there must be some cool thing or service for this. I searched. There were couple of things that is close to what I envision but even though the service wasn’t that significant they were charging a lots of money or some seems to require lessons to just start using. Nothing satisfied me. Then as I continue my search, I realised that IT innovation in agriculture is progressing way too slow compare to other industries. When they say high-tech innovative agriculture, it is like automated vegetable growing factory thing that completely ignoring where the reality is.

Anyway, the foundation for some cool innovative engineer to develop some goodies with well usability was not existing in agriculture sector. When you come right down to it, some service developed in Silicon Valley seemed good but they could not function well in the underdeveloped country where I do farming. Why? Because premises itself in developed countries and underdeveloped countries is just way too different. Education level, moral and needs are just way too different. When I can’t even find the service that function well in developed countries, of course I could not find any service that can function in underdeveloped country, where with the people never once connected to internet.

Ok. Well, then why don’t we develop the system then!? If we are struggling, there must be someone else that are having same problem. If these farmers in underdeveloped country continue doing farming in this way without taking any data or whatsoever, it won’t take them anywhere and never increase their harvest yield. If I can develop something in somewhere that no one is yet to put their hand on, it probably create huge value. Then, AGRIBUDDY was born.

Now, we are at the start. I say, we just have reached to the start line. At the beginning, I was thinking to complete my business in here in 5 years and move to somewhere else. But my plan didn’t work at all. In last 4 years, there weren’t any success but only disappointments, failures, struggles and reglets I was experiencing. However, my challenge never ends. I have just started my new challenge. Well, let’s roll.