You turn on the TV to watch a sports event and you see a pristine pitch without thinking twice. But behind the scenes, there is a sophisticated system of turf science focused on mowing, fertilization, irrigation, seeding, and aeration. It costs in excess of $1M per year to maintain the average golf course. E-Nano is building a future where robots are used to monitor and control the process of maintaining sports fields and stadium pitches to bring these costs down and reduce the environmental impact of turf management. The company’s robotic solution integrates sensors, 5G, and AI to provide sophisticated analytics to optimize field maintenance.
London TechWatch caught up with CEO Christian von Scheidt to learn more about how robots-as-a-service will modernize turf management, the company’s future plans, and initial fundraising efforts.
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
We are currently raising our pre-seed round at E-Nano, aiming for a £275,000 SEIS/EIS investment for development of our MVP and go to market. This round is set to close by 30th of June 2021.
The financing round is led by SFC Capital with other angel investors (including high-growth company founders) onboard.
Tell us about your product or service.
E-Nano is creating modular robots for monitoring and control of sports fields and smart stadiums (and AgTech in the near future). We envision a future where sport managers not only have the perfect fields but also keep an eye on the environmental impact of their amenities. Our innovation allows users to autonomously collect and process soil and environmental data to reduce costs and increase the performance of sport surfaces.
Our robotic solution (Sprout) uses a variety of sensors, AI, and 5G to offer sport field managers and keepers the opportunity to collect data, carry out analysis and predict growth, reducing maintenance costs. Sprout not only can obtain more measurements in the field but can do so in a precise and reliable manner at any time of the day/night. Managers are able to see the data online from our web platform (OSCAR) in real-time and carry out analysis using maps and analytics tools.
What inspired the start of E-Nano?
As engineers, we love exploring tech, even in our free time. We started the core robotics, for what today is the E-Nano solution, when looking at ways to solve water pollution issues. This inspired us to develop a modular robotic brain (OSCAR) that could be fitted into any casing to control a different robot every time.
Having OSCAR ready and operational, we’ve decided to focus on scouting robots for agriculture and sports.
How is it different?
Our solution is open-ended on both the hardware and software ends. While the OSCAR API allows for analytics by third-party specialised solutions, Sprout is modular and can embark tools from partners to carry out additional tasks in the field.
What market are you targeting and how big is it?
The global sports turf market is significant ($1.9B, PrecisionReports, Feb 2021) and is projected to show continuing growth in the future (CAGR: 7.2%, 2022-2027), this being in part due to the availability of large amounts of broadcasting money as well as the rapid expansion of new markets such as China and India.
In the UK alone, there are 250+ stadia, 40,000 football pitches (elite training, semi-professional and amateur), 2,400+ golf courses, and 60 professional racecourses. This represents a market of approx. £100m for the UK Soil care.
What’s your business model?
Turf managers test the soil on a regular basis on a few different locations and get recommendations from a consulting firm to adapt the program (twice a year). On average, the groundskeepers’ team (5-20 people) maintains 5 to 15 fields.
Our proposal includes the use of Sprout on a much more regular basis to automate the collection of data and improve the repeatability and reliability of the process. That way, we can rely on greater sets of data to advise our clients and make better use of their resources.
We will offer our solution through a Robot-as-a-Service, RaaS, model combining the power of Sprout robots with a service that lowers barriers to entry.
We estimate our service has the potential to achieve 20 to 40% savings on water usage, seeds, fertilisers, pesticides, and labour. Better guidance to manage water and nutrients would translate in the saving of 5.4 million litre of water a year (the equivalent of Olympic-sized swimming pools) and greenhouse gas emission reduction of up to 4t CO2eq a year per pitch.
How has COVID-19 impacted your business?
COVID-19 was actually a catalyst for our solution. The development of remote working has increased our customer value proposition. In this uncertain time, offering an autonomous scouting robot to monitor and control sports fields has proven useful.
Nevertheless, COVID-19 also brought challenges to the team and has hindered us to grow as we expected, putting some barriers with mobility and delaying the return of professional sports events.
What was the funding process like?
As with most early-stage startups, the funding process has been (and continues to be) hard. We had our fair share of rejections along the way and we have had limited access to family and friends that can support this kind of endeavour with investment.
We were lucky enough to have one angel investor and SFC Capital to back us up early on in this funding round, allowing us to continue the smooth operation and development of our team while finishing this round.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
Like many entrepreneurs, we are faced with introducing ourselves to investors who don’t know the entrepreneurs and don’t know the skills of the team. Having an impact and showing what you are able to do with only a set of 10 to 15 slides can prove hard to anyone.
Like many entrepreneurs, we are faced with introducing ourselves to investors who don’t know the entrepreneurs and don’t know the skills of the team. Having an impact and showing what you are able to do with only a set of 10 to 15 slides can prove hard to anyone.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
A great team, a niche market with a need for disruption, and the opportunity to have a sustainability impact while creating a great business.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
- Expand the team
- Engage in trials with first clients
- Validate the complete solution and create a “white paper” with the impact that can be generated by the solution
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
We are engaging with Premier League and Championship teams and looking into testing our products with them. We want to use this opportunity to validate our technology and the impact we can have to change current practices, making them more sustainable.
We are looking to expand our team to further develop our data analytics and AI, improving our value proposition to our clients.
