Angus Muffatti, Agtuary
Farming and outer space might seem like poles apart, but it is something that ties Angus Muffatti and Matthew Rozek together as founders of Agtuary.
Angus and Matthew met during their aerospace engineering degree at RMIT university, sharing the same supervisor while completing their thesis which involved using applied machine learning techniques to optimise spacecraft trajectories and engine design.
During their degree, they worked together on a few extra curricular projects for NASA, taking the pair to Florida. One of the challenges was to design a space habitat on the moon to support up to 50 people for 50 years.
The next year they were again invited to go to Florida and were able to meet people from SpaceX, NASA and Blue Origin. Competing against top tier US universities such as MIT, they won their project category and celebrated in the best way they could.
“You get to have a few beers on the beach and watch a rocket launch. It’s awesome!” admits Angus.
Angus and Matthew continued to work together in a variety of engineering roles. However, it was their collaboration on remote sensing for water quality and crop production forecasting that led to the launch of Agtuary, a startup working to simplify and streamline the lending process between banks and farmers.
“Global agriculture is run on debt. In Australia alone, farm debt has more than tripled over the last 30 years,” says Angus.
Angus and Matthew discovered that the methods that banks currently use to manage a farmer’s finances are outdated, with everything done by hand and entered manually into the banking system.
“There is a whole bunch of friction in the process,” Angus says. “Ultimately, this is a time consuming process that creates an unnecessary waste of energy and expense.”
“It takes an average of 8 weeks or more for a farmer to get a loan approval on a credit decision. We saw a real opportunity to bring our technical expertise and apply it to make the process easier.”
Agtuary’s ‘Farm Gate’ platform automates the process and improves the relationship between bankers and farmers.
By digitising the process and bringing in a range of different data sets, bankers can assess their clients faster and more easily because farmers and accountants can create succinct and detailed reports.
“Getting rid of the manual grunt work allows banks to focus on the other aspects that require human interaction,” says Angus. “We want banks to build better connections with the farmers, and to reward better and more sustainable farming practices.”
When Agtuary came to SproutX, they were looking for an agriculture-based accelerator program and to learn from industry experts.
“We know we need to get as close to our customers as possible,” admits Angus.
“With SproutX, we were able to utilise the quality mentors and workshop sessions to build those connections. There was a lot of behind-the-scenes work that made us feel supported. They really have gone above and beyond what we were expecting.”
Agtuary has outlined some milestones moving forward, including gaining traction before their seed round. With pilot projects now running, Agtuary are on track to raise this seed round by mid-2021.
In the meantime, there are still plenty of challenges to work through.
Angus describes his challenges as “Everything! Not one big thing.”
“COVID has changed the priorities for the banks, leaving us on the backburner for opportunities where we feel we could’ve helped to prevent or at least ease some of the pains.”
This hasn’t stopped them from pushing through. Agtuary have been relentless in validating their solution, and continue to seek out the best ways to build connections between the farms and the banks.
“We’re excited to be launching our platform over the next couple of weeks with our regional accounting firm partners which will go a long way to help reduce a lot of the inefficiencies in the lending process and provide value to farmers looking for finance.”
