An interview series spotlighting global tech influencers, disruptors, visionaries, and of course, innovators.
Season’s Greeting! Wishing you a healthy, safe and happy holiday season.
Tevel Aerobotics’ flying robot drones use artificial intelligence to help farmers pick billions of dollars' worth of fruit currently going to waste. Under the helm of Founder / CEO Yaniv Maor, Tevel combines its airborne patented robotics platform with sophisticated algorithms in order to create the world’s leading autonomous concept for orchard harvest and management. Developing a fleet of drones for performing picking, thinning and pruning tasks in fruit orchards, Tevel’s airborne approach provides a holistic harvesting solution to the farmer through its combination of cutting-edge algorithms, AI, and data analytics.
The Israeli agricultural drone manufacturer is currently completing a $20 million financing round, having already raised $11.5 million in two prior investment rounds. Shareholders include Israeli funds Maverick Ventures and OurCrowd.
An IAI Program Initiator and Manager, Lumio VP R&D and VKB Inc. team leader, Maor has written over 24 patents, received the CES best innovation award Elta honoree for management, and was a candidate for IMOD honoree for innovation. I caught up with Maor via email to learn more about his views on a variety of topics including farm tech solutions, teamwork, leadership and entrepreneurship. Our interview follows.
EKMH: Tevel Aerobotics has developed an autonomous driving platform with several tethered robots that fly and harvest fruit. What’s your vision for the future of Tevel Aerobotics? What problems in the fruit production industry do you solve now and which future problems do you anticipate? How will Tevel Aerobotics address these changes?
Yaniv Maor: Our vision is to transform the farms to autonomous farms and perform many intensive tasks autonomously -- including harvesting, thinning, pruning and data-driven farm management -- for securing fruit’s supply chain. We aim to provide a global solution to the global problem of farm labor shortages.
EKMH: What was your Eureka!! moment for utilizing instant artificial intelligence-based analysis to solve labor shortage problems and streamline the harvest process?
Yaniv Maor: I encountered the shortage of fruit picking labor ten years ago after watching TV documentary about the labor crisis in the Israeli agriculture. After a short evaluation, I realized that the problem complexity required massive real-time calculations at that time AI technology was not available.
Four years ago, when I saw the progress with AI, I decided to return to this problem. At the beginning I thought conventionally – ground robots. After a short dive I came to the conclusion that these robots would be too expensive and too limited. So I thought to myself, “I need a small robot that can maneuver fast and flexible. Then, while working in the kitchen, the idea popped out – why not to pick with flying machines? They are agile, has great maneuverability and lower in cost.
Tevel’s management team and team leaders are mostly people with whom I connected and I assembled throughout my career. These experienced, methodological professionals have worked for/with me in the past and I have excellent communication with them. We have also group of young committed employees who are doing extraordinary work that make up a talented team. In total we have 35 employees in the company, most of us are in the software and algorithms field. We are a small-high-quality engineering group and small-high-quality operation team.
EMKH: How did you rally a team, and later investors, to support your platform?
Bringing an investment opportunity to a technology company is tough, bringing it to an investment hardware company is tougher, and bringing it to a complex-risky system company is the toughest.
One common thing unites all of our investors: they are visionary investors. Very supportive, they want to see our solution work and solve the biggest challenges of the modern agriculture and secure the fruit supply chain. They are not afraid of these challenges and understand that once the solution works, the opportunity here is infinite. Every investor, who knows the details, understands that our team has achieved impressive progress, thereby the risk is mitigated and opportunity proves massive.
On location: The Tevel Aerobotics team featuring their fruit-picking drones.
EKMH: What advice do you have for first-time entrepreneurs and founders?
Yaniv Maor: I have a good deal of advice, but the following three recommendations top my list:
Do everything with passion.
Do not compromise with the team –professionally AND personally.
Hire a good lawyer firm: from day-one correctly shape the company.
EKMH: How has the pandemic accelerated the adoption of Tevel’s robots and AI technology/ robotics? How have you seen people’s mindset change about robotics during these last months?
Yaniv Maor: The need for fruit picking robots increased during the pandemic as fruit pickers were/ are blocked at borders and not allowed to do to the farms. This year the situation was worse than and year and demand for our robots increased. It’s clearer today more than ever that fruit picking robots will play a significant role in securing the fruit supply chain.
EKMH: What skills help you effectively lead your team of Israeli aerospace and electronics industry veterans?
Yaniv Maor: The most important is stamina, the ability to believe in something, bringing excellent people together and working hard to make projects come to fruition.
It’s difficult for me to tell which skills are the most important, but those that have helped include my experience with R&D management and project management, writing 28 patents throughout my career and bringing product ideas to diverse markets, including the consumer industrial defense markets. That I earned my BSc and Masters degrees from an excellent school, Technion, also has made a difference.
EKMH: Please share some lessons that you learned from your most incredible failure(s)? most significant breakthrough(s)?
Yaniv Maor: Good enough on time is better than perfect.
EKMH: What challenges did you face when founding the company?
Yaniv Maor: I have the privilege to work with Eyal Desheh, our Chairman of the Board, who is also my partner, who brought his experience and network to the company. Eyal is an extraordinary person who has participated in many of Israeli’s success stories, including IPOs and acquisitions. My introduction with Eyal was through a tragedy. after I founded the company. Oz Desheh, Eyal’s brother, joined Tevel, and unfortunately, shortly after Oz was diagnosed with brain cancer and subsequently passed away. It was a tragedy for the family, for me and also for Tevel, which was in the very early stages. Eyal joined Tevel, and from that point we have been working together.
EKMH: And lastly, please share a favorite book, film and/ or podcast.
Yaniv Maor: Tony Seba, Future of Transportation / Keynote: 2020 NC DOT Transportation Summit.
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