Alesca Life is a Beijing-based AgTech company that completed its seed round in 2017, and is currently in their accelerator/incubator stage. They create urban-friendly, hydroponic vertical farms. They offer four vertical farm products, each of which have unique features and advantages: Alesca Container Farm, Alesca Fresh Indoor Farm, and Alesca Sprout. They also offer a web-based supply chain management system for their three vertical farms, named Alesca Cloud.
There are several key differentiators to Alesca Life’s products. For one, Alesca Life does not grow commercial staple crops, such as corn, wheat or rice, nor does he grow them via a traditional farming method. He instead focuses on growing leafy greens, such as greens, herbs, and microgreens, such as lettuce, kale and arugula. Founder Stuart Oda claims that by utilizing hydroponics, his “urban farms use 90% to 95% less water, fertilizer and land and no chemical pesticides, herbicides, or fungicides compared to traditional agricultural methods, but there is still significant opportunity to improve the efficiency of these farms.” Furthermore, Alesca Life develops all of their proprietary software and hardware in-house, meaning they have powerful control over their means of production. This includes their “Internet-of-Things” sensor boxes inside their vertical farms, which monitor the crops and can be controlled through the web with Alesca Cloud.