VERICS HYDRO-FARMS

Verics hydro-farms is one of the pioneers of hydroponic farming technology in East and Central Africa. We specialize in the manufacturing, installation and marketing of customized hydroponic fodder and vegetable systems to help small and medium holder farmers have access to a high quality, affordable and sustainable way of farming.

Growing up in Kawangware,one of urban slums, our biggest challenge was getting fresh vegetables, mostly we could rely on the small kiosks trusting that they would serve us with fresh and healthy vegetables. But this was not the case, most of the vegetables in Nairobi are grown along the open sewer lines which makes the produce very harmful to our health and transportation of these products from food baskets of the country is very expensive,increasing cost of living for many of us in slums making life in the city too expensive to live.

Our cuntry majorly relies on agriculture and farm products not only for self sustainance but also in trading.With this we trget to serve each and every farmer in the country,be large scale or small scale,urban or rural, in order to give farmers a consistent FFSarming technology that can be relied on even with adverse weather patterns and other variables that come with soil farming in general.

At Verics,we offer Simplified hydroponics proposed for the country to increase productivity of farmers, utilize degraded lands and reduce water requirements for farming. The various simplified hydroponics systems are designed for a family using as small as 6m by 2m to 1/8 acre of land. 1/8 acre of land can produce from 40 to 200 kg of agricultural products a day. Hydroponics take up to 50% less land to grow the same amount of crops: Leaving more land for other uses such as wildlife reserves and also saving trees, which would otherwise be cleared for agricultural purposes, less water usage: In fact, less than 80% the amount that would be required for growing in soil. The only water lost with hydroponics is through evaporation, or occasional changes to the feeding solution. 60% less fertilizer is required: The hydroponic growing solution circulates through the system and is taken up by the crops, the crops only takes what it requires and the rest is taken back to the reservoir tank.

At Verics Hydro-farms,our systems have customized to suit our customer preferences whilst using less than 60% of fertilizer used in convectional farming.We do soil less farming  methods where we eradicate the soil factor in farming and consider a dormant substance as base for growth of crops. With this we are able to mount hydroponic systems comfortably in concrete surfaces without considering varying factors that come with soil farming.This also allows to ,almost to accurate,predict the expected harvest projected from a systems that we set up for our customers translating also to the amount of revenue and profit therein that a system would reward a customer;therefore considering low income urban areas farmers,they will be able to fend for their families healthy and adequately and also improve their standards of living in the long run.Another advantage acquired from using this new technology also is that there is less wastage of farm inputs and our systems have been simplified enough to work as a self independent system where the farmer only switched on the necessary equipment and only has to monitor crop growth overtime.This will work best for an urban farmer in terms of time management in running other errands as well as cost save in term of labor than is normally incurred in soil farming.This will be progressively help urban settlers in consuming healthy and customer-friendly farm produce in the comfort of their hoe and consecutively improve health and living standards of their families and the society at large

Most hydroponic systems are taken to be very complex and so it needs high proficiency skills to maintain them which might be expensive for farmers,we therefore modified these systems to be simple enough for a farmer to operate and maintain even without agronomist skills in hand.We give them basic knowledge that is required to run the simplified systems in order for them to be at ease and concentrate more on ensuring the system reach full capacity in terms of harvest and farm produce.Our hydroponic systems are designed to run a self-sufficient cycle that includes effective watering system with which we only require the farmer to ""switch on the valve "for water solution to run and check timing as well so as to ensure all crop are well watered,Our water solution has logarithmic ratio of nutrients required by different plants.Here we train the farmer on what observation results are healthy and what results will more technical help.Basically then these systems on require monitoring to which we provide the training for and ensure that the farmer is able to sustain the durability without any complex professional skill

Due to adverse weather patterns ,our country has been hit with extreme weather xhanges and mostly drought seasons have prolonged seeing large scale farmers making losses from huge chunks of land which transaltes to large percentage of the population in our country,Kenya,to starve;our technolog offer low cost production farming technology with high returns to our farmers and like minded individuals to have consistent and healthy farm production which sekks to solve these problems we have solved.Also,we have so much of land taken up for resential spaces and less land is left for farming and saw need to create then,farming culture in the taken up resedential spaces to leave more room for forestry and environmental conservation.

Currently we serve 50 clients

We look to serve 150 clients in one year and

Serve over 1000 in 5 years

We look to set up over 150 systems in the next year with improved marketing chanells and systems in place and over and over 1000 in the next 5 years in installions alone.We also look to train over 1000 people on this technology in this year and hit  our 2500 in the next five years.

These people will help us in installation of systems as we have created a platform for them to be self employed and also create their ventures to increse healthy food production and sustain their families

We face finanical problems in acquiring raw materials for installations which are costly and translates to high price of our products.

We also have problems in marketimg our products being a startup compared to the established organisations in our country.Also being a new technology,our clients are finding it difficult to adapt to it and its benefit and therefore our marketing strategies though strong,need to revised everytime which is also expensive

We use reusable raw materials to substitute the expensive ones which also help in environmental conservation and are cheap to purchase

We also do vigorous marketing and take advantage of any markteting platforms to sell our systems and technology

Our referalls are helpful in explaining benefit of our systems to potential clients which also helps in boosting our profile

Full time workers 8

Part time 5

Eric Kamau-Business developer and agriculture enthusiast

Fredrick Oloo-Agronomist professional and hydroponics expert

Veronicah Kamau-Strategist profressionally and outreach activator

Dennis Karimi-Accountant

The Somo Project-This organisation has helped in helping us to segement this market that they also venture in.They also work with us on setting up a financial system that works with our line of work and also mentorship

The 4 main hydroponics systems that we offer for the community are :

• Greenhouse systems for Tomatoes, cucumber, cherry tomatoes

• Vertical systems for strawberries, herbs( parsley, basil)

• A shape system for lettuce, traditional vegetables and chinese cabbage

• Hydrowall for all types of vegetable.

we manufacture,install and market these systems and we have modified them  to endure the kenyan climate and leans more to assist our customers in accessing high quality, affordable and sustainable food production regardless of the changing weather patterns.Our systems are first,simplified enough to enable our customers understand and make it easy for the to maintain,we also considered to make them fit the women and youth and physically challenged clients we serve.This is a move to ensure that there is sustainable and high quality food production.Our main beneficiaries are low income and middle incoe urban farmers and potentially farmers in general and like minded individuals in this field

we have four revenue streams:installations,trainings,buy back of produce where we provide a market for client buy buying goods for them and selling to high end suppliers and increase the profits compared to their regular streams they recieve from the systems

Sopve will help Verics in upscaling operations in terms of service where we will be able to have our officla demo farm where we can showcase to our cloents better our products with minimal supervision unlike visiting clients farms;we will aslo be able to network with fellow entreprenuers and learn from them and Solve as well.

The Melinda and Gates Foundation-technological skillset needed in running an agribusiness 

Safaricom Foundation-Communication strategies that are effective by day

The Tony Elumelu Foundation-Outreach to the larger African farmer.