Pre-proposal: AgroCognitive - An ultimate solution to bring Dash to the fields (First month)

[AgroCognitive]

Last updates! 27/04

· We are working with Dash Core for the escrow of our next proposals ( 2 and 3 )

· AgroCognitive already have reached out to Dash Core to arrange an exclusivity agreement for three years. Right now Dash Core team is checking with the lawyers on the process to create this exclusivity agreement

· Check our last webinar for more details about our solution

AgroCognitive & DASH Digital Cash Project Video

Know what is AgroCognitive, why is DASH our currency and the benefits for farmers, people and the network

Want to know more details about why and how AgroCognitive will change your life? Watch this

We are proud to introduce our project to DASH Community: AgroCognitive

AgroCognitive is an ultimate solution to bring intelligence and agility to a new agriculture era.

What we do?

Today’s global agriculture are facing a lot of challenges to supply food to a growing demand while taking care of the environment. AgroCognitive ingest a photographic crop registry to deliver descriptive analytics (what is happening in your crops), prescriptive analytics (what you should do to fertilize, hydrate, fumigate, etc) and predictive analytics (what will be your crop output). AgroCognitive, each time receive a photographies upload from a customer, it will invoice him the amount in DASH and receiving payment address. Once payment is confirmed, AgroCognitive will send a PIN to access his analytics. Additionally, as small farmers negotiate their futures productions with agro-industries to get cash in advance, we will propose part of this advance should be done in DASH.

In Venezuela, farmers can't exchange bolívares (VEF) to USD to get access to technology and supplies. AgroCognitive will bring DASH Digital Money to the fields and open possibilities to easily pay for this service using the new local exchange platforms under development (like Colibit, CryptoLifex both funded by Dash Treasury also), without any assets investments.

AgroCognitive’s Operational Model:


Traditional agriculture model is based on the extensive use of labor, methods of fumigation / nutrition by dispersion with high supplies costs and productivity per hectare below large farmers. Precision agriculture is much more efficient in supplies and productivity, however it requires large investments in technology and equipment. AgroCognitive is a service that will bring intelligence and precision to the field without requiring farmers does big equipment’s investments (or have to make bank loans), to grow. Additionally AgroCognitive will offer some discount to customers using DASH:

• Very small farmers in remote areas can access our service through trade associations that will buy analytical packages in DASH with a 25% discount

• Medium farmers who require on-demand service and pay in DASH will receive a 15% discount

• Agroindustrial companies will have a 30% discount for making their payments in DASH by prepaying AgroCognitive packages for their own crops and ecosystem of farmers that supply agricultural products.

In cases where the customer does not have his drone, AgroCognitive has signed alliances with business affiliates that provide the drone’s service for photo’s crop tracking (these contracts subscribed for payments in DASH)

There will be three modalities of contract:

• Subscription for the complete cycle of one harvest,

• Subscription for the annual periods,

• On demand according to the requirements of the producer

AgoCognitive’s Funding:

From the moment of its creation as a proposal for innovation, research, design, prototyping and presentation of AgroCognitive (in Venezuela and Costa Rica), USD 12,750 has been raised and invested, however for its implementation and training a funding is necessary, which is what we present to the DASH’s Community for their acceptance.

The AgroCognitive’s project funding project will last 6 months, time taken by the technical implementation (development, integration with the DASH exchange platform, payments, etc) and machine learning training. We will request the funds in the proposals including this one. The second one includes months 2,3 and 4, where we will be using Dash CORE's escrow. The last proposal is for the 5th and 6th month, also using the escrow with CORE team. For more details see the Implementation Plan.

AgroCognitive will operate as a separate startup from the operations of Smartbase Group, so it will have its office, expenses and personnel assigned, as well as its revenues every time the services begins (scheduled for month 4). However, Smartbase Group as a sponsor and investor will fund USD 2,500 every month (at the end of project out total investment will reach USD 27,750). This will be the capital we could rise to show DASH Community our contribution and commitment to this project (see References section to full Cash Flow statement)

The following is the cash flow of AgroCognitive investment for month 1 (expected to start in May 2018), which will be approximately 92 DASH

During second month, we will be reporting and presenting advances to DASH FORUM to request funding for month 2, and so on until the funding injections is completed by month 6. In the reference's section you will see the full cash flow for 12 months, where you can verify how AgroCogntive becomes profitable after month 7 and starts generating revenue (all in DASH)

Implementation Plan:

Our implementation roadmap covers not only the technical and integration aspects with DASH, but also working with the farmer community to teach them the benefits not only of AgroCognitive for their business, but also how the use and adoption of DASH as money can bring them stability. and security to the countryside economy.

At these talks we are going to invite farmers, the suppliers / vendors, trade unions and distributors.

The follow is our milestone plan:

Who we are?

Smartbase Group is an innovation and technology small business company based in Venezuela offering machine learning, blockchain, analytics, and customer experience solutions to a cross-industry customers. Our team is formed by a young computer and electronic engineers, marketing and data science professionals and three partners committed with the digital transformation era and blockchain technology adoption.

Team:
- Javier Soto - Commercial Director
- María Victoria Jorge - AI Specialist
- María Victoria Díaz - Consulting Director
- Alejandro Romero - Makering Specialist
- Carlos Spaggiari - Blockchain Specialist

Benefits for DASH

• Entering the root of the productive and commercial chain of agro-industry ensures the adoption of DASH in a sector with a high circulation of money

• The AgroCognitive project will carry out training work and participate in sessions with farmers’ trade associations to explain the benefits of using DASH as real money, not only to pay for AgroCognitive services, but also to exchange materials and supplies among their community

• We will promote agro-industrial companies that include incentives for the pre-purchase of a crop from DASH farmers, this will guarantee that the farmer already has DASH as part of his income, so we guarantee a circular flow

• The cash flow of AgroCognitive at the close of the first phase with two trained crops, by April 2019 we will have sent more than 25,000 transactions in the DASH network for an equivalent of 350 thousand USD
• AgroCognitive will offer discounts incentives for receiving payments with DASH
• DASH will be the only one cryptocurrency accepted

References:

Technical architecture:


Cashflow :


Awards:
AgroCognitive participated in the Cognitive Challenge Latam 2017 contest, qualifying to final round (with just 3 other solutions over more than one hundred participating) and won the People's Choice Award as "the solution will change people life in future"

Reference in other languages

 

[Name3]

I think this is a great idea, and you seem like a relatively professional team. Could you give us some more details on companies that are interested in your technology and why you think you will be able to get this technology to be widespread? Essentially, while the idea is there I worry that as a startup you may not be able to get your foot in the door to get your first customers.

 

[María Victoria Díaz]

I think this is a great idea, and you seem like a relatively professional team. Could you give us some more details on companies that are interested in your technology and why you think you will be able to get this technology to be widespread? Essentially, while the idea is there I worry that as a startup you may not be able to get your foot in the door to get your first customers.

Thanks for your interest, we appreciate your support. We are a small business company from Venezuela with more than 10 years of experience delivering techology and service. Our customers range goes from small to large business companies. We have validated AgroCognitive concept and its usefulness with farmer’s associations of sugarcane, corn and cocoa, as well as others agroindustry companies in Venezuela, like Empresas PMC, which is a corporation with the three main local sugarcane producers. Their response has been incredibly enthusiastic. Even more, a group of cocoa farmers from Monagas, Venezuela, has volunteered to participate in a pilot test for the solution.

Because AgroCognitive is a cognitive system, it has to be trained. Once trained, it can be exported to other countries where we also operate, like Ecuador, Perú and Chile.

We also have included accounts in the cash flow under the concept of marketing, to participate in different agricultural fairs that are held in Venezuela and others countries to show AgroCognitive and gain new customers.

 

[jesccs]

During December 2017 and January 2018 we were interviewed in different radio stations and TV channels in Venezuela to talk about the AgroCognitive project and the international award for being an innovative idea will change people life. You could hear (spanish only) follow links:

At Bocaranda 2.0
http://smartbasegroup.com/entrevista-en-la-cola-feliz/

At Ciberespacio
http://smartbasegroup.com/entrevista-edgar-rincon-a-smartbase-group-1er-desafio-cognitivo-2017/

 

[Arthyron]

Very interesting project, and I love that getting it off the ground means it will be able to transplanted to other areas. Could you go in to more detail about how you're interfacing with these other Venezuelan projects Dash has funded, how you'll be using those exchanges, etc?

One possible thing to explore, in the USA, Cannabis/Hemp farmers and dispensaries have both had a difficult time managing funds because most banks refuse to do business with Cannabis/Hemp based businesses, so early on many cryptocurrencies (Hempcoin, Potcoin, etc) were created to facilitate payments between farmers, dispensaries, and consumers. Dash has taken this one step further partnering with Alt36 as a payment solution for these industries.

While you are not dealing with controversial crops and instead trying to get farmers to participate in and adopt new technologies and programs, there's an opportunity here to also help them integrate with Dash as a form of payment which might allow them to work directly with the consumers of their crops and open up new opportunities for contributing to the larger Dash ecosystem. As it stands, your proposal so far mostly just seems like a request for funding for your business, but if you could also work to bring Dash payment systems and a working knowledge of it to the farming industry, that would greatly increase the value to Dash and the likelihood that your proposal is funded.

One possibility is offering a discount to farmers who pay for your services and equipment or participate in your program when they pay in Dash, and assistance in onboarding them to your platform, which would increase the flow of Dash in the local ecosystems and through the local cryptocurrency exchanges. Maybe that's already part of your plan, but it wasn't clear from what you've written so far. If not, I think that would be a great way of adding value to your proposal.

 

[jesccs]

Very interesting project, and I love that getting it off the ground means it will be able to transplanted to other areas. Could you go in to more detail about how you're interfacing with these other Venezuelan projects Dash has funded, how you'll be using those exchanges, etc?

One possible thing to explore, in the USA, Cannabis/Hemp farmers and dispensaries have both had a difficult time managing funds because most banks refuse to do business with Cannabis/Hemp based businesses, so early on many cryptocurrencies (Hempcoin, Potcoin, etc) were created to facilitate payments between farmers, dispensaries, and consumers. Dash has taken this one step further partnering with Alt36 as a payment solution for these industries.

While you are not dealing with controversial crops and instead trying to get farmers to participate in and adopt new technologies and programs, there's an opportunity here to also help them integrate with Dash as a form of payment which might allow them to work directly with the consumers of their crops and open up new opportunities for contributing to the larger Dash ecosystem. As it stands, your proposal so far mostly just seems like a request for funding for your business, but if you could also work to bring Dash payment systems and a working knowledge of it to the farming industry, that would greatly increase the value to Dash and the likelihood that your proposal is funded.

One possibility is offering a discount to farmers who pay for your services and equipment or participate in your program when they pay in Dash, and assistance in onboarding them to your platform, which would increase the flow of Dash in the local ecosystems and through the local cryptocurrency exchanges. Maybe that's already part of your plan, but it wasn't clear from what you've written so far. If not, I think that would be a great way of adding value to your proposal.

Hi Arthyron,

We appreciate your useful post and love get Dash’s Community interest.

1. Local projects integration: Yes, Dash has funded in Venezuela several projects in wide areas: educational/adoption conferences, communities conversations, help desk, entrepreneurs and exchanges. All of them are very important to start the economic ecosystem. We need all of them and exchanges in specific (Colibit & CryptoLifex will make possible exchange local currency VEF for DASH) because they will give to our customers (from farmers to agro-industry) an easy way to get DASH to pay for AgroCognitive services. The integration to this exchanges are included in our roadmap in order to guarantee customer pay using VEF. They are now under development phase but business contacts are already sent to start technical commitments

2. International markets: Since AgroCognitive won Latam Cognitiva’s contest last December 2017, we have received a huge quantity of mails, phone call and physical visitors from everywhere with interest to become customers and analyze their crops (from fruits, coffee, cocoa, corn until cannabis). They understand AgroCognitive will add a great value to their business but need an easy and universal way to access and pay for it. Since 2017 we have our own Blockchain lab, doing and testing this technology, we really bet on crypto currency adoption and selected DASH Digital Cash as the perfect for this business due to fast transactions and very low fees.

3. AgroCognitive funding: We see your point of view clearly and our implementation roadmap includes farmer’s education and training using our solution and paying with DASH. We’ll edit / update our post here to reveal that kind of details in order to answers your valid questions and DASH Community could see real value with this proposal. We want funding because Agrocognitive needs to train its AI engine (which is expensive to train but cheap to use once the machine learned) and to integrate with DASH’s local exchanges and wallets, however we believe the key of any cryptocurrency adoption roadmap is the whole supply and commercial chain penetration. If Dash only arrives to final customer’s pockets as a way to spend money in retail goods and services (whom receive DASH and then change to any fiat money), and do not goes to the others levels: big vendors, industry, farmers, artisans, distributors, etc, the real adoption will take more time. AgroCognitive’s proposal will penetrate these chains from starting points and brings DASH to agro-industrial ecosystem.

4. Discounts and incentives: Yes, we see your point and will be detailed this week also. AgroCognitive business model will includes incentives to small farmers, and yes, DASH payments will receive a discount. In Venezuela, DASH payments will be the only way to access the service and will be the only currency to pay to our business partners (drone’s service providers). International markets customers will receive discounts with DASH payments also, but AgroCognitive will surely have to pay to vendors with fiat money, at least until we could sign business partnerships. Other exciting opportunity is with IBM whom our Machine Learning’s Watson engine vendor, we have to pay them using USD now, but we had held conversations to pay in the future with DASH once our Watson API calls increase and demonstrate them a high demand projections, this will be a big success to the DASH adoption goals!

On behalf AgroCognitive team, I thank you for your valuable feedback and take the time to read our pre-proposal.
Regards,
Javier Soto

References:
CryptoLifex: https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/...x-venezuela-exchange-vef-dash-dash-vef.18015/
Colibit: https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/...t-cryptocurrency-exchange-in-venezuela.17614/

 

[AlejandroE]

I think this pre proposal is interesting since you are targetting the base of the food industry and this is big issue right now in Venezuela. But I have the same questions of Arthyron. The Dash Community and MNOs want to see that you are giving a real value (specific benefits) to Dash with your project. Integrating Dash with the farm/food industry could be very big, but just accepting Dash as a method of payment is not enough.

Maybe you guys can point out in your thread the specific benefits for Dash your proposal will bring. I am here to help you, Venezuelans need to help Venezuelans and we need Dash gets massive adoption very soon.

Best regards!

 

[Arthyron]

@jesccs -- Thanks for taking the time to address my questions and more thoroughly explain. I think that provides a great value to the ecosystem in Venezuela that we're trying to create from a very different angle/vector. It's not enough to merely be able to exchange Dash for goods and services, we need to get to the root of those supply chains and that's where farmers come in. It sounds good, you have my support.

 

[andrade92]

I agree with @AlejandroE maybe you should make more visible to the community the specific benefits for Dash. Going to the roots of the food industry is ambitious and have to show a really great impact for the MNO's. However, it is an interesting project, there is a lot of potential in the food industry for Dash.

 

[jesccs]

I think this pre proposal is interesting since you are targetting the base of the food industry and this is big issue right now in Venezuela. But I have the same questions of Arthyron. The Dash Community and MNOs want to see that you are giving a real value (specific benefits) to Dash with your project. Integrating Dash with the farm/food industry could be very big, but just accepting Dash as a method of payment is not enough.

Maybe you guys can point out in your thread the specific benefits for Dash your proposal will bring. I am here to help you, Venezuelans need to help Venezuelans and we need Dash gets massive adoption very soon.

Best regards!

Thank you Alejandro for your interest and comments!

Yes, we are working right now in order to detail our implementaron roadmap and give to DASH's Community all Benefits will bring AgroCognitive to the ecosystem including how we plan to introduce DASH Digital Cash into the agroindustrial chain. We believe our proposal is strong and add real value to DASH's adoption.

Please contact us to [email protected] in order to integrante our projects.
Regards
Javier Soto

 

[jesccs]

I think this pre proposal is interesting since you are targetting the base of the food industry and this is big issue right now in Venezuela. But I have the same questions of Arthyron. The Dash Community and MNOs want to see that you are giving a real value (specific benefits) to Dash with your project. Integrating Dash with the farm/food industry could be very big, but just accepting Dash as a method of payment is not enough.

Maybe you guys can point out in your thread the specific benefits for Dash your proposal will bring. I am here to help you, Venezuelans need to help Venezuelans and we need Dash gets massive adoption very soon.

Best regards!

Hi, we already posted an update. thanks for your valuable comments

 

[jesccs]

@jesccs -- Thanks for taking the time to address my questions and more thoroughly explain. I think that provides a great value to the ecosystem in Venezuela that we're trying to create from a very different angle/vector. It's not enough to merely be able to exchange Dash for goods and services, we need to get to the root of those supply chains and that's where farmers come in. It sounds good, you have my support.

Hi, we already posted an update. thanks for your valuable comments

 

[methusaleh]

Two members of your team have the same profile pic in the team links, only 1 of you is over 25 yet terms like Consultant and Specialist are being bandied around and only 1 of you has a linkedin profile. This is effectively a start up by any reasonable interpretation and there aren't even any discussions about equity to make this a little more attractive.
Don't get me wrong, I like the idea, but then I like baked cheesecake and I wouldn't invest in that either. Best of luck though

 

[jesccs]

Two members of your team have the same profile pic in the team links, only 1 of you is over 25 yet terms like Consultant and Specialist are being bandied around and only 1 of you has a linkedin profile. This is effectively a start up by any reasonable interpretation and there aren't even any discussions about equity to make this a little more attractive.
Don't get me wrong, I like the idea, but then I like baked cheesecake and I wouldn't invest in that either. Best of luck though

Hi Methusaleh,

Thank you for your comments. It helps a lot to improve our post.

It was a mistake to members linking to the same profile, it’s already fixed and correctly linked.

AgroCognitive is a project design and promoted by Smartbase Group(http://smartbasegroup.com). Our company has 10 years giving IT solutions to many customers (included agro industry) and enjoys an excellent reputation. This project was born by the identification of needs in our customers, to provide analytics and bring technology to the crops. We really want AgroCognivite to be a StartUp and have an operational and economic independence from Smartbase.

Our team is proudly young and is graduated from prestigious universities in Venezuela, we call them specialists because each one of them is not only programmers, they are leading projects that require very specific technical skills (Cognitive, Analytics, Blockchain etc). I understand your point perfectly and we will nourish the profile’s information so the community can know more about them.

We do believe in our project and are convinced that it is an incredible opportunity to insert DASH into the root of the food’s commercial chain giving value through high tech service. Today we have placed a new infographic to better explain the extent of what we want to do. We would love to have a new comment from you.

Regards and thank you for your time

 

[LorenzoRey]

This definitely looks very interesting, I haven't been able to read it fully, but from what I can tell at first glance, it looks promising. I will give my complete feedback once I can read it with detail.

However, even though I don't know him well (we've met in person) I can tell that @jesccs is a professional and knows what he is doing.

Saludos !

 

[TheSingleton]

These kinds of proposals are always hard to judge. Even if the basic idea is sound startup's do fail.

In this case, I think the chance of getting part of the Venezuelan supply chain onto Dash is worth the risk.

 

[TheSingleton]

Do I understand it correctly that after this proposal is funded you will be self-sufficent?

Also, it would probably a good idea to talk with Core about an agreement for you to use exclusively Dash for a period of time after going live.

 

[jesccs]

These kinds of proposals are always hard to judge. Even if the basic idea is sound startup's do fail.

In this case, I think the chance of getting part of the Venezuelan supply chain onto Dash is worth the risk.

Hi TheSingleton!

Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

We understand your doubts in thinking that this project may fail, maybe we can summarize some key success factors considered:

• This business model exists in first world countries with other vendors but in a very limited way (they only detect problems but do not predict or prescribe) and at a very high price, however they are profitable. For us, modeling predictions and prescriptions is our "business as usual" work.
• At this moment we have the support of several clients in Venezuela (included agroindustrial big players), who are only waiting for AgroCognitive to finish implementation and AI training to hire and use it (not mentioning the potential customers from Mexico, Colombia and Ecuador who have called us and they not considered in the deployment until month 9 of our cash flow),
• The AgroCognitive service price is for small and medium farmers will be very accessible,
• All technology required is in cloud as a service (we do not need local servers or depend on electrical supplies), and
• We as a company, count with the credentials and customer's references of our honesty and success in our projects throughout of all our history

We kindly invite you know more about AgroCognitive and trust in us!
Regards

 

[jesccs]

Do I understand it correctly that after this proposal is funded you will be self-sufficent?

Also, it would probably a good idea to talk with Core about an agreement for you to use exclusively Dash for a period of time after going live.

Hi Again!

Yes, the implementación and training (for two crop types) will take 6 months and funding also. Since month 7, AgroCognitive will become self-sufficient because its planned revenues. We estimate strating in month 9 we could already train AgroCognitive in a third crop, when there is already accumulated revenue to continue investing. This Pre-proposal describe the entire project but only consider first two months funding. During month 2, we'll subbiting funding proposal for month 3...

Of course we are willing to sign an agreement with the Core team to guarantee that we are only going to accept DASH in the first year or more, it seems reasonable and fair.
We would see it like this: In Venezuela there will be no other payment method (only DASH), internationally we can reach this DASH exclusivity agreement for one year.
We are going to contact the Core team to discuss it.

Thanks again for your valuable feedback !

 

[Unstoppable]

I'm conflicted on this pre-proposal.

It's a unique, interesting project. I think it's great. Working to get Dash flowing throughout the agriculture industry of Venezuela is also great. But does Dash really need to be funding this startup, which is not really related to Dash, other than it will be used and encouraged as a payment method?

According to your cash flow spreadsheet you plan to receive 444 dash over the next year. At the current price of $500, that is $222,000.

I'm not sure I'd vote yes for this. A three year Dash exclusivity agreement, in a contract signed with Core, would help.

But really, Dash should not become angel investors in anything and everything simply because it will be offered as a payment method.