[AgTech Rising] iocrops CEO Cho Jinhyung Seeks Breakthroughs with ‘Practical Technology Tailored to Farmers’

The biggest topic in Korea’s agricultural sector recently is undoubtedly ‘smart agriculture,’ which combines artificial intelligence (AI), autonomous driving, and unmanned robots. As the government pushes strategies to expand smart agriculture, a variety of advanced technologies are pouring into the market. However, at farming sites, criticism continues that “compared to the astronomical cost of adoption, they are difficult to handle, and if they break down, there is no solution, so they are just a pie in the sky.” This is because there is a deep gap between highly advanced technologies born in laboratories and the realities on the ground that actual farmers can accept.

Cho Jinhyung, CEO of iocrops and a former engineering researcher at POSTECH, is a figure confronting this gap head-on. As a mechanical engineering specialist who had been considering physical design using Internet of Things (IoT) technology, he judged agriculture—a field where technology adoption had been relatively slow—to be a blue ocean, and founded iocrops in 2018 to jump into entrepreneurship.

Before starting the company, Cho, who had no farming experience at all, volunteered as an unpaid trainee at a tomato farm in Cheonan and worked the soil himself. He emphasized, “What I felt firsthand while holding farm tools in the field was that if the level of technology is excessively higher than farmers’ expectations, it loses practicality,” adding, “Technological capability is important, but understanding the unique characteristics of agriculture and solving the real problems farmers face must come first.”

‘Spraying robot’ using RDA technology transfer and intuitive integrated platform ‘ioFarm’
iocrops has built an ‘FTVC (Full Tech Value Chain)’ encompassing everything from sensors to data analysis and robots. The ultimate goal of FTVC is to solve the rural labor shortage caused by aging and realize an ‘Autonomous Greenhouse’ through greenhouse automation. Among its robot lineup covering scouting, spraying, and harvesting, the company is currently concentrating its full capabilities on commercializing the ‘spraying’ area.

iocrops is preparing for the full-scale launch of its smart farm spraying robot ‘HERMAI’ at the end of August. Developed through a technology transfer from the Rural Development Administration, the robot is currently being distributed through a new technology dissemination project, and farmers are expected to be able to purchase it once procedures such as official agricultural machinery registration are completed.
 
The core of ‘HERMAI’ is its ‘automatic steering and row-changing function,’ which allows the robot to switch rows and move on its own without an operator. In particular, the company developed its own modular mobile drive platform to lower hardware costs, and it is characterized by a mass-production system in which the same drive unit can later be converted into a scouting or harvesting robot simply by replacing modules.

‘ioFarm,’ an intelligent integrated farm operation system, has also been reorganized around field needs. After trial and error benchmarking complex overseas dashboard services, it is now focusing on the most essential need for farms: ‘irrigation monitoring.’ It quantitatively measures how much water plants absorb and, based on this, provides intuitive guidelines needed for root development and growth—such as heavy irrigation or small, frequent irrigation—thoroughly managing excesses and shortages of water and nutrients.

20% labor cost reduction at North American farms… productivity proven with data
‘Ation,’ a smart farm work and workforce management solution, is solving farms’ chronic labor management stress with transparent data. When workers scan QR codes placed on each line inside a greenhouse, their working hours and work efficiency are recorded in real time. It is evaluated as leading to motivation and improved productivity because results can be clearly checked by worker on site.

This solution has proven its performance with concrete figures in North America, where labor costs account for a high share. According to iocrops, after introducing Ation at a 135,537-square-meter complex sorting and packing center in Canada, workload per unit time increased by at least 20% and up to 35%. Canada’s ‘Prism Farm’ also shared its own data showing that work efficiency increased by 30%, shortening total working time by about two hours per day on average.

The cost-saving effect is also clear. A cucumber and paprika farm in Ontario, Canada, said, “Through Ation, we were able to place each worker in the right position, reducing labor costs by 20%.” In particular, one farm that had been operated with a total of eight workers was able to reduce one worker after introducing the system and continue operating smoothly, resulting in annual labor cost savings of about 50 million won.

Lowering barriers to field adoption with a ‘nationwide after-sales service system’ and ‘cultivation guides’
iocrops does not stop at selling advanced equipment. It also regularly publishes ‘cultivation guide content’ on its Naver blog so that elderly farmers or novice growers can easily follow along. Regardless of whether products are purchased, the company continuously delivers knowledge to farms and expands trust-based touchpoints.

Its thorough after-sales service (AS) policy is also receiving a positive response in the field. It provides a free warranty period of one to two years depending on the product and guarantees extensive repairs unless the user is at fault. In particular, by building a dense network with local partner companies at the city and county level nationwide, it has completed a nationwide AS system capable of responding immediately to sensor inquiries or robot operation errors that occur several times a day.

Now in its eighth year since founding, iocrops is overcoming the gap between advanced technology and field realities by ‘offering low-tech products at reasonable prices alongside advanced technology.’ Recognizing the reality that revenue in Korea’s smart farm supply market still remains below the 10 billion won range, the company has established a concrete goal of strengthening self-sustaining profit models and growing to more than 10 billion won in sales.

Leading Korea’s agricultural AX (AI transformation) and targeting the global market
Recognized for its technological capabilities, iocrops won the grand prize, the Presidential Award, at last year’s Agri-Food Startup Contest, and earlier this year was selected as one of the first ‘Outstanding Smart Agriculture Companies’ (15 companies in total) hosted by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. Earlier, in 2020, it made its name known in the global market by participating as Team ‘Digilog’ in the World Agriculture AI Competition (Netherlands) and winning third place.

The reason iocrops is being chosen in the workforce management solution market, preempted by global giants such as the Netherlands’ Priva and Hortimax, is paradoxically its ‘simplicity and flexibility.’ While existing global companies’ systems are aging and structurally complex, iocrops’ solution is intuitive, containing only essential functions. In particular, the fact that it runs on a smartphone app instead of a dedicated hardware scanner, eliminating equipment breakdown risk, has attracted the attention of large-scale farm owners.

Despite the constraint that, due to the nature of overseas markets, the purchase conversion cycle is long—more than a year—it has secured 10 paid purchase contracts for software (Ation) alone in less than a year since entering the market. It currently has a sales pipeline of about 100 potential farms. It is expanding sales centered on the U.S., Mexico, and the Netherlands, and these negotiation histories are expected to connect to a potential market for future spraying robot adoption.

CEO Cho Jinhyung said, “In the short term, after selling about 10 to 20 HERMAI spraying robots to be launched in August, we plan to establish a mass-production process and industrialize it.” He also expressed his ambition, saying, “Our long-term and ultimate goal is to realize a fully unmanned automated greenhouse where robots move around for corporate farms.”