Aējou, Mustard Seed Ventures – Generate the rightful perception as the brand-owner
Darren Ho & Andrew Shih, Co-founders, Mustard Seed Ventures
Aējou Mini
What happens when two friends – one an urban farmer and the other a contract manufacturer – get together? The answer is the invention of Aējou, a modular, climate-controlled farming system that is designed like a kitchen appliance.
In 2019, Darren Ho and Andrew Shih got together to create a device that allows consumers to grow vegetables and herbs within their own homes. Combining their expertise in urban farming and manufacturing, they developed Aējou GrowFridge - a fully-automated system, with in-built temperature, lighting, humidity and nutrient dosing controls. Roughly the size of a wine fridge, this smart system is able to adjust the microclimate to suit the type of vegetable being grown, ensuring a seamless growing experience, from seed to harvest. To give the user the best growing experience possible, Aējou can be controlled by a mobile app, so the user can record and view the growing process in an informational, interactive and fun manner. Realising that the F&B and hospitality businesses would also have high demand for such a product, the team created Aējou Pro as a larger system, targeting restaurants and hotels that require significantly higher quantities of produce. To bring both Aējou Mini and Aējou Pro to market, Andrew, and Darren co-founded Mustard Seed Ventures. In addition to selling the hardware system, they plan to also sell the seeds and system substrates required to grow the produce.
“One key challenge we had in commercialising Aējou is that there are no other similar products already in the market, so we had nothing to model our product against. We had to basically invent an entirely new product from thin air. To do this, we spent a lot of time brainstorming how our device should function and look, in order to differentiate from any other hydroponic system already in the market,” said Andrew Shih, co-founder of Aējou. “Aējou Mini is meant for the typical layperson, who may not be a gardening enthusiast. So we wanted to create a user-friendly product, which would allow users to grow their produce fuss-free with close to 100% success. This meant that crops grown in Aējou should germinate and grow in the same vessel from seed to harvest, without need for any user intervention.”
In order to achieve this, Mustard Seed Ventures collaborated with various tech partners to build their prototype. An earlier prototype of Aējou adopted a combination of Deep Water Culture and Nutrient Film technique, though this did not achieve their desired goal. Subsequently they developed an Ebb-and-Flow technique that currently features in their product.
“The innovation journey has been long, arduous and at times frustrating. We faced many roadblocks and disappointments. However, I do not see this as a waste of time or resources. Each set-back brought us one step closer to achieving our vision of what we want Aējou to be. Our toughest challenge to date has to be COVID-19. Inventing a new product under any circumstance is tough. But having to do it with no face-to-face meetings adds another whole level of complexities. For example, it could take us 30 minutes to explain our concept over a zoom meeting, something that would have probably only taken less than a minute with a hand-sketch. In addition, COVID-19 caused many supply chain disruptions, which delayed our product development by several months. There were several incidents when we had to source for new components for the product at the last minute, due to a sudden unavailability from our suppliers. COVID-19 also led to frequent manpower shortages, due to Stay-At-Home notices or Quarantine Orders. Sometimes, it felt that we were encountering overwhelming issues every single day!” exclaimed Andrew.
Aējou Pro
Fortunately, Mustard Seed Ventures kept trudging forward, buoyed by enthusiasm from friends, family and a few of their pioneering customers, who have been very pleased with their Aējou Minis. The team continues to gather early customer feedback, which is used to improve the product and customer growing experience. Mustard Seed Ventures plan to launch Aējou Mini in the first half of 2022 and Aējou Pro by the third quarter of 2022. They are already in discussion with various organisations, including restaurants who require freshly-harvested greens on a daily basis, as well as schools who are interested in teaching their students about the Singapore Green Plan 2030, which is a national movement to transform Singapore into a greener and more sustainable city over the next several years.
“Since Aējou is such a unique product, we knew we had to protect our brand right from the start. With advice from That.Legal and support from Enterprise SG’s Market Readiness Assistance grant, we registered the Aējou trademark across SE Asia, Europe and the U.S. We first plan to launch Aējou in Singapore to gain a better understanding of our target customer and their requirements, before expanding regionally and subsequently internationally,” said Andrew Shih. “Therefore, registering our trademark is critical for letting others know that we are the rightful owners of the Aējou brand. This includes potential customers – both the individual who may buy Aējou Mini for their home and businesses who may purchase Aējou Pro to grow produce for their customers, potential investors, as we will soon begin looking for our Series A round to grow the company, regional distributors when we are ready to market Aējou beyond Singapore, and business partners, who may be keen to collaborate with us on our next new and exciting opportunities!”
Andrew Shih, Co-founder, giving a TEDx Talk @ Anglo-Chinese Junior College in 2023
“Just like how the Aējou® GrowFridge™ provides an effortless growing experience to our customers, the team at That.Legal explained all our legal/IP options clearly and concisely, thus enabling us to make more informed and quicker decisions in our international IP applications.”
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