Photo credit: Jeena Paradies .
Remember the ‘Fitbit for cows’, the wearable that helped farmers increase milk yields? Well, they just announced that they’re part of Y Combinator’s winter ‘17 batch.
Cowlar, which started up in Pakistan but is now headquartered in California, builds a tracking wearable that monitors the body temperature and behavior of cows. That allows farmers to detect when the animal is in heat and the best time for insemination.
It becomes the second startup from the country to be accepted into Y Combinator – after artisanal shoes startup Markhor did it in 2015.
Umer Adnan, CEO of Cowlar, claims the wearable helps increase dairy output by approximately 15 percent.
“We’re a hybrid of dairy science and machine learning inside a plastic box,” he remarks.
Cowlar’s wearable tackles a very real problem. Emerging countries like India, Pakistan, Mexico, and Vietnam have millions of cows – India is home to the largest livestock population in the world – but average milk yields are around a quarter of those in the US and Netherlands.
A large part of the reason is inferior farming practices, poor nutrition, and abysmal veterinary standards.
“The biggest thing we’re trying to capture is when a cow is in heat. If farmers miss the heat cycle then the next cycle comes after 21 days. If you miss that, you’re missing out on 21 days of milk production,” Umer told Tech in Asia in April.
Cowlar’s team. Photo credit: Cowlar.
Stepping out of the comfort zone
The idea for the gizmo came during Umer’s previous entrepreneurial foray – design company E4 Technologies – which developed products for wireless crop monitoring, energy optimization, and motion tracking for sports.
Cowlar was one of its products – probably the most unique and disruptive – but definitely not the one making the most revenue. Umer claims E4 Technologies had clients from 8 countries, made US$300,000 in revenue in 2016, and was already profitable.
The team decided to pause all that to concentrate solely on Cowlar.
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