Vertical farming startup Babylon Micro-Farms recently raised $8 million in a Serie A round. Alexander Oleson, CEO and co-founder of Babylon Micro-Farms, joined Cheddar News to explain his company's mission to help businesses and communities grow their own fresh produce in a sustainable manner.

Vertical farming startup Babylon Micro-Farms recently raised $8 million in a Serie A round. Alexander Oleson, CEO and co-founder of Babylon Micro-Farms, joined Cheddar News to explain his company's mission to help businesses and communities grow their own fresh produce&nbsp;in a sustainable manner.

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Vertical Farming Startup Babylon CEO Discusses Benefits of Indoor Farming Technology

Farming startup, Babylon of micro farms raising eight million in a series a round led by Venture South Babylon developing an indoor farming system called gallery. The product is a wall appliance designed to grow more than 50 different plant varieties and the company says its mission is to grow the world's biggest network of distributed indoor farms so people can get closer to their food. Joining me now is Alexander Olson C, co founder of Babylon Micro Farms. Alexander. Thank you so much for coming on the show and in your words, explain to me what you're doing. So at Babylon, we use multi of vertical farms to help businesses and communities grow their own fresh produce and these are hydroponic farms, but we're growing plants about 2 to 3 times more quickly using 90% less water than growing outdoors. There are no pesticides or chemicals. So it's a really sustainable way of growing fresh food and we remotely manage the whole process to make it really easy for the users. So there's no green thumb required. Wow. Ok. So I want to go back to your shop because I see some of what appear to be the vertical farms behind you, explain what's behind you and how this technically works. Yes. So we build these modules, they're a little bit like a double door refrigerator and they basically are self contained vertical farm. So we can place these indoors really anywhere where there's water and electricity and turn them into productive vertical farms. So people can grow food 365 days a year. Your average clientele I'm reading here that it costs $15,000 for your product called Gallery. Is it restaurants? Is it farmers? What's the clientele base? And so with all new technologies, we've had to start off in a specific segments. So we work with a lot of commercial food service operators like a the and some really exciting accounts like IKEA linkedin and others where we're putting the farms into their food service locations. But our long term goal is to leverage our remote management technology to make these modular farms accessible to businesses communities and even consumers down the line. How does that remote technology work? So we have sensors and different patented technology within the farms that allow us to basically change the conditions to grow the crops effectively. We then actually control those conditions remotely and provide alerts and reminders to the users through an app. So they're guided from seed to harvest and don't need to have any horticultural background to be successful. OK. Let's walk through. Of course, the expansion plans, Alexander. I know you said you want to have a long term solution here, how are you going to grow the business? Right now? We've built a factory in Richmond, Virginia and we're scaling up our production and really seeing a strong market adoption. And so from here, it's really around driving the cost of the units down to make it more accessible because with every step down in cost, we know that there are new market segments where they would like the stock or their own fresh produce. I think consumers might be wondering is the taste of these products any different, whether it's better or worse or the same? Yeah, not only is the taste better, but it's actually more nutrient dense. We send our produce off to get lab tested. It is showing up as more nutrient dense than other kind of local organic sources. And so we're offering a premium product. We're offering heirloom varieties. You often can't source throughout the year. So we're innovating on that front and of course, the produce is super crisp and tastes a lot better than things you can buy conventionally. You know, another question people might have is what about bugs? Obviously, this is encased. So I'm sure that probably prevents bugs. But if this is inside, are there any concerns on that front? Yeah. So food safety is a priority for us we're able to offer second by second traceability on all the conditions from seed to harvest. So it really is one of the most food safe means of growing fresh produce, certainly compared to the current supply chain. And because the units are enclosed and we maintain a positive pressure inside, there are no bugs and in terms of the density of the nutrients, I know you said the products are more nutrient dense. What kind of data can you provide to back that up? And in terms of, you know, basically refrigerator to table, what the time span is the life span of these nutrient dense foods that you're growing? Yeah. So, you know, we have reports on basically different kind of macro micro nutrients in our crops versus other outdoor crops. And one of the primary drivers of that is just freshness right where the time from harvest to plate in our case is often minutes or hours. Whereas for a lot of the stuff you buy in the store, it may have been in a for, you know, a week or more. So we have much longer shelf life and when the crops are harvested and they are much fresher and that is driving a lot of the nutrient density because they haven't been depleting in a truck. They look tasty and healthy. Alexander, Olson, Ceo and co-founder of Babylon Micro Farms. Alexander. Thank you.