Victorian agtech startup Drone-Hand has raised $720,000 in a pre-Seed spherical for its autonomous livestock administration platform.
The increase was led by US VC Radius Capital, supported by three native agribusiness traders
Gippsland-based Edward Barraclough based Drone-Hand in 2023, having grown up in NSW on a combined livestock property. The thought was impressed by an statement by his 80-year-old father.
“He seemed over my shoulder at some point and stated, ‘If that drone could check the stock for me, I could stay on the farm longer.’ That’s the place it began,” Barraclough stated.
“Drone-Hand is about creating tools that make life easier for people like my dad, farmers who want to stay on the land and work smarter. Autonomous systems are the next frontier in practical, farmer-first innovation.”
Drone-Hand doing its factor, counting livestock and checking their well being
Drone-Hand got here via Farmers2Founders, the nationwide agtech accelerator that’s helped flip tons of of on-farm concepts into investable startups. It’s additionally scored a LaunchVic agtech grant, was named the AIIA Victoria StartUp of the 12 months, and gained the water, meals and agribiz class within the Australian Applied sciences Competitors final yr.
Barraclough stated Farmers2Founders was pivotal to his early development.
“Farmers2Founders gave us the education, network, and investor support to accelerate our vision,” he stated.
“Their guidance was instrumental in helping us articulate the real-world impact of autonomous systems for agriculture.”
The expertise combines machine studying, drone automation, and fixed-camera techniques to ship real-time, insights into livestock location, welfare, and infrastructure. It function offline, so cloud connectivity isn’t a problem. It will possibly observe and depend livestock, verify water and fences, and flag animal-welfare points, changing hours on the bike with minutes within the sky.
Trials with JBS Australia have already validated 99.9% accuracy in livestock identification with one in every of their techniques beneath real-world situations. Livestock mortality prices the sheep and cattle industries over $2 billion yearly, losses Drone-Hand is hoping to cut back.
The funding will go towards staff enlargement, gross sales and advertising and marketing functionality, and scaling industrial deployment throughout Australia over the subsequent 6–18 months.
Greater than 200 producers have already put their hand as much as give it a crack and the startup’s subsequent step is changing trials into prospects via on-farm demonstrations and strategic partnerships.
The modular drone techniques vary from moveable quadcopters for household farms to long-range Vertical Take-Off and Touchdown (VTOL) and “drone-in-a-box” fashions for twenty-four/7 operation.
Drone-Hand plans to broaden into North and South America following its Australian rollout, concentrating on large-scale operations in areas similar to Texas and Brazil, the place the expertise’s offline autonomy provides vital benefits.
