Trung Vo, PhD in Physics from the University of Sydney, and Khuyen Nguyen, PhD in AI of Macquarie University in Australia, were present at the latest show of Shark Tank Season to call for investment in their startup.

Unlike other agriculture projects, Clever Mushroom utilizes AI, data science and computer vision to collect data about the entire mushroom development process.

Using science and technology in agricultural production, the two founders have designed a new business model from the farm to consumer. 

The special features of the mushroom farm are smart technologies that optimize the cultivation process. Vo said that thanks to the technology, the farmers "who don’t know how to grow mushrooms can produce mushrooms and deliver products to customers".

“What you need to do is have a bottle for growing mushrooms like ours. Use smartphones, download our app, and scan the QR code. Our smart device can understand which kind of mushroom you want to grow,” Vo said.

“You don’t have to do anything else. You just need to wait five days and enjoy your mushrooms,” he said.

Khuyen Nguyen, the CTO of the startup, said other smart farms mostly use sensors to measure humidity and light, but they face difficulties in analyzing the materials they collect.

Clever Mushroom can solve the problem because it uses sensors to collect data about the environment of the mushroom growing area. Smart cameras record images to analyze the data by cloud computing, thus building models which regulate the development of mushrooms in the best way.

The biggest resource of the startup is the data collected when users use the devices in their mushroom cultivation chamber. From the data, Clever Mushroom will develop solutions by cloud computing.

“Our device can make decisions automatically. Farmers don’t need to know when they have to increase the humidity, when to turn on/off light or when to activate ventilator,” he explained. “All the activities are implemented automatically."

The two founders said that it is difficult to persuade mushroom farm owners to use their solution because most farmers don’t have knowledge about technology. Clever Mushroom has built a sample farm in Australia to show the effectiveness of the clever mushroom farming model.

Clever Mushroom founders successfully called for $300,000 from Shark Hung Anh in exchange for 15 percent of shares, plus 6.5 percent for consultancy.

Trong Dat