20. October 2020

Bodeschmiede Follow-Up HAIP

Hyperspectral imaging startup generates profit in first year

How have the finalists of the Bodenschmiede ideas competition been doing since its end in June? Tobias Kreklow, co founder and CEO at the hyperspectral imaging startup HAIP Solutions, joined Farm & Food for an autumn follow-up. You can check out his live pitch from summer 2020 here (German).

By Sarah Liebigt

Farm & Food: Please introduce yourself.

Tobias Kreklow: I am Tobias from the HAIP Solutions team in Hannover and we are working on hyperspectral cameras for the detection of plant stress.

What has happened since the ground smithy event?

The Corona crisis has of course affected everyone, including the start-up scene. It is not easy to win new pilot customers in these times. In general, networking is very difficult. Digital works a bit, of course, but it doesn’t replace the analog version.

Many people need to be able to see and touch products. Nevertheless, we have actually managed to get a first intermediate product to the market. In August we brought one of our first solutions in the field of phenotyping to the customer. You can imagine it as a box with a camera mounted on top. A perfect environment, a kind of clean room for the camera. You can now use it to analyze hop samples. We want to push this even further and have adapted the business model so that we also achieve the first sales and have a positive outcome at the end of the year.

In general, with this box, which is also a very simple solution, you can analyze plant and food samples under perfect conditions. This technology always sees more than the human eye.

What is your conclusion from the Bodenschmiede Live-Pitch?

It was exciting to get to know other ideas. But it didn’t change much for us because of the Bodenschmiede. Basically, this scene in Germany is still very small and you often see the same faces again on different occasions.

What difficulties and problems have you encountered?

A general difficulty is that the development of new technology always presents you with problems and the timing as it was once thought does not always work out as it should. You just have to live with that. It’s part of it that you can’t say: “Okay, after the sprint and the sprint it’s done”. Sometimes it takes one more iteration. And of course you have to make that clear to the customer or potential partner somehow.

Otherwise, it is always important to try to generate sales on the side. In our case, we have done that. But I think that’s one of the biggest challenges for young companies: keeping their heads above water.

What is the next step for HAIP?

We are still planning the market launch of the drone solution for the coming year. That means we are well on schedule. We are still selling the box solution. Our focus is on continuing to place these two products on the market.

But a great deal still needs to be done to achieve this. We are still in the pioneering phase, we are working on participating in funded projects and are always looking for sponsors.