Mr. Dang Xuan Truong, CEO & Founder of startup the Hachi Group, tells VET about its Smart Hydroponic System app.

■ How long did the Hachi Group research its Smart Hydroponic System app? What support did you receive when developing the idea?

After one year developing the app and one month after officially commercializing it, Hachi reached several significant milestones, including being named as the “Best Agriculture Project” at Startupwheel 2016 and the “Most Potential Startup Project” at the Lotte Awards 2016. Most recently it secured a trip to the US to visit Silicon Valley, at Techfest 2016.

■ What difficulties did Hachi have to cope with when developing the idea?

The first difficulty was capital, because a high-tech agriculture project requires a large amount of money for developing hardware, buying agricultural equipment, and developing the app on mobile phone. The second challenge was improving and officially commercializing the app, as we lacked experience in this regard. We sought out Vietnam Silicon Valley (VSV) for support. VSV provided initial capital for us to complete a model of the app and consulted on commercializing it.

■ How is the system structured? What are the principles of its operation?

There are three parts to the system: an app for mobile phones with Android or IOS operating systems; Internet of Things (IoT) hardware, and a normal hydroponic system, and each part has different functions. The mobile app can control environmental parameters in humidity, temperature, and light, while the IoT hardware connects the hydroponic system with the mobile app and controls the pumps and sends data on the environment to the server.

The system is an IoT solution. It uses sensors to monitor environmental parameters and this data is then sent to mobile app.

■ What are the outstanding features of your Smart Hydroponic System compared to others around the world?

Most smart agriculture equipment is imported from Israel or Japan and are quite expensive. Information on the equipment is written by English, so can be difficult to use by Vietnamese. Ours has a reasonable price, of about VND5 million ($220) to VND10 million ($440) for the farming app and about VND2 million ($90) to VND3 million ($130) for the household app.

■ What economic benefit does it bring?

It can increase harvests by up to 50 per cent and cut the harvest time down to 30 per cent of what is usually required.

■ How many customers are using the app?

Hachi’s app is being used in 50 places around Vietnam.

■ What plans are there for future development?

The Hachi Group will improve the products to a higher level, extend our market to cities and provinces such as Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang, and Quang Ninh province, and improve Smart Hydroponic System for farms in 2017.

VN Economic Times