Onside enables farm managers and owners to ensure all staff and contractors entering the property are registered online through the company’s app, with full details of farm hazards, access points and layout all available through their smartphone.
“We were actually oversubscribed for this, we went out seeking $1.5m and had a significant amount of interest,” Onside chief executive Ryan Higgs said.
The successful investment companies include packhouse technology company Compac, with support from other investors including K1W1, NZ Growth Capital Partners and Icehouse Ventures.
Developed four years ago, the app now claims 20,000 registered users across New Zealand, with rural Australia now firmly in its sights.
Higgs says Onside has enjoyed some benefit of timing by coming on stream as NZ experienced some significant biosecurity challenges in the primary sector, tightening health and safety requirements in farm businesses and the implications of a lockdown.
The biosecurity issues include PSA and M bovis, both which have required significant improvements in knowing who is on a property at any given time.
He says the greatest gains in users has come from kiwifruit orchard owners in the Bay of Plenty.
Orchardists’ tendencies to use a wide range of contractors and the biosecurity concerns around PSA spread had necessitated the use of such an app.
However, other types of primary industry enterprises are offering good opportunities for the company, particularly poultry and viticultural operations.
Higgs says Onside was now used by 80% of the meat poultry sector to monitor entry to sites in an industry that has very tight biosecurity standards.
“The funds we have raised will enable us to further develop the market here in NZ, but also to get more users on board in Australia,” he said.
“NZ’s viticulture sector is known to be progressive, then the Australian wine industry is even bigger, and the US even bigger again.”
He says Onside had evolved rapidly in the past couple of years to now offer more than just a health and safety compliant app, to deliver more operationally useful information to its users.
“So when a contractor turns up at a farm and registers with Onside, they will also get full information on where access is, farm hazards, a contact number for someone at the farm and even where the toilet is. It ensures the entire job becomes seamless,” he said.
He believes the $2.5m would give the company capacity for two years to expand before seeking further funding.
“Then we would be looking at what is known as a ‘Series A’ funding exercise. This latest one enables us to show we are able to develop more markets and expand,” he said.
Onside was founded in 2015 by Juliet Maclean, co-founder of Synlait, Higgs and Michael Falconer, executive chair of Orion Health. It has received support from Callaghan Innovation and AgMardt.
