The team at Aanika Bio are bringing forward a novel idea---take a packet of synthetic biology (think of a Kool-Aid mix packet), put it in your spray tank, which is then paired with spray drift insurance, and if a drift claim is made, you can get results in a week—not months.
“We think a lot of spray drift claims are handled very subjectively. There’s no real objective data, and there’s a lot of false information out there,” says Aanika Bio co-founder and CEO Vishaal Bhuyan. “We’re actually offering clarity into these situations, because we don’t think in a lot of these circumstances the damages are as bad as made it out to be.”
HOW IT WORKS
Aanika Bio puts their synthetic biology in a dry powder or liquid form, which provides a unique DNA sequence traceable on the leaf’s surface.
“We can actually detect one droplet that’s sprayed onto five pounds of soybean leaves. So it’s literally one square yard of plant surface we can detect one droplet and tell you where that droplet came from,” says Jamie Richards, CTO at Aanika Bio.
Part of the Lloyds of London network, Aanika Bio is backed by a reinsurance company and offers their own insurance underwriting.
“We are offering coverages in a way that has never existed before,” Bhuyan says.
MARKET APPROACH
The company leaders say the product is offered for between $1 to $2/acre. They aim to be on hundreds of thousands of acres in 2025 via partnerships with ag retailers.
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