Interview with Shin Sang-hoon, CEO of Green Labs
Focus on Global Food Issues, Founded with Goal of Agricultural Digital Transformation
IT Experts Unite... Surpass 500,000 Farmer Members in 1 Year and 8 Months Since Launch
Shin Sang-hoon, CEO of Green Labs, stated the background of the startup as "I started the business to take on the challenge of digital transformation in agriculture." Photo by Kim Hee-yoon
[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Heeyoon] “Although the situation in Korea is different, the global population has exceeded 7 billion and is approaching 10 billion. Smart agriculture is the only solution to address the increasing food supply issues on limited land.”
As the post-COVID era arrives, digital transformation is accelerating across various sectors, and the agricultural market is rapidly growing through digital transformation led by smart farms. Agricultural startup Greenlabs, after gathering 500,000 farmer members on its agricultural data platform ‘Farm Morning’ within 1 year and 5 months of launch, has recently expanded into livestock. CEO Shin Sanghoon explained, “While digital transformation was underway across all industries such as mobility, distribution, and finance, agriculture remained an untapped area, which motivated us to start this venture. Since agriculture, livestock, and food are interconnected as front-end industries of food supply, we are expanding our experience in agricultural digital transformation to provide smart farm systems that efficiently control and raise livestock.”
The agricultural data platform 'Farmorning,' which gathered 500,000 farmer members in just 1 year and 8 months since its launch, has established itself as an essential app for farming households. The photo shows the Farmorning app screen. Photo by Green Labs
Agricultural Platform Providing Farming Methods to Improve Productivity Through Data Analysis
Greenlabs introduced an agricultural platform connecting production, distribution, and sales by building data-driven farm environment control systems, installing and managing smart farms, analyzing wholesale market prices, and handling e-commerce. The domestic smart farm adoption rate of only 1% was the background for the startup. CEO Shin said, “The Netherlands, which is about 40% the size of Korea, has grown into a global agri-food export powerhouse with 99% smart agriculture adoption. At the time of our founding, Korea’s smart farm adoption rate was less than 1%. We elevated the first-generation smart farm systems, which were simple automation, to second-generation technology applying cloud computing systems that provide AI-learned data to automatically control farm environments.” In fact, as the number of farms using Farm Morning increased, the diversified cloud data became more sophisticated through AI learning, and the system was upgraded to control farm temperature, humidity, carbon dioxide concentration, and nutrient solution adjustments, receiving high praise.
In an era where meat consumption surpasses rice, livestock naturally became a new business area following agriculture. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, there are 1,007,000 farming households in total, with 69,000 Hanwoo cattle farms, 4,000 dairy farms, 3,000 pig farms, and 31,000 poultry farms, accounting for 10% of the total but generating an annual production value of 20 trillion KRW, which is 40% of total agricultural production. Greenlabs strengthened its livestock service value chain last year by acquiring livestock smart farm company Realfarm and livestock distribution company Yesulso. CEO Shin emphasized, “The domestic livestock industry, including related sectors, is a large market exceeding 70 trillion KRW and is more corporatized compared to agriculture, making it easier to apply data-based livestock management systems. For example, monitoring dairy cows’ health through sensors to track biometric signals and adjusting breeding periods improved milk production efficiency. In poultry farms, checking chickens’ appearance and sounds to detect contagious abnormal signs early helped prevent damage spread by immediate culling.”
Greenlabs plans to lead the globalization of data agriculture by providing Farm Morning's data agriculture services to agricultural wastelands with harsh climate conditions or areas that require the establishment of smart farm infrastructure. The photo shows the Farm Morning Experience Center. Photo by Greenlabs
IT Experts United for Agricultural Digital Transformation
Greenlabs, aiming to become the first unicorn in the agricultural sector, was founded in 2017 by digital experts in finance, IT, and platforms. CEO Shin, a former fund manager at Bank of America (BoA) and Merrill Lynch, also founded Nextmatch, which created Korea’s top dating service app ‘Amanda.’ Co-CEOs Andonghyun and Choi Seongwoo are commerce experts who founded the shopping platform Kucha; Andonghyun later served as CEO of Pikicast. Why did these digital experts choose agriculture as a new challenge? CEO An said, “Despite Amanda’s success, I was deeply contemplating the essence of business and hoped that entrepreneurship would bring innovation to society as a whole. That’s why I focused on humanity’s food issues and took the first step toward agricultural digital transformation. Since we already had experience and software technology essential for agricultural datafication, we could dream of industrial innovation even without deep agricultural knowledge.”
Greenlabs currently analyzes Korea’s agricultural digital transformation speed as leading in Asia. Collaboration requests continue from countries with high food self-sufficiency demand, mainly in Southeast and Central Asia, and last year they completed a test of remote farming in Vietnam using sensors and IoT. CEO Shin stated, “Since founding, we have recorded triple growth annually, achieving 100 billion KRW in sales last year. This growth is largely due to providing data that farmers can feel on-site, expanding the platform scale. We plan to focus this year on offering more benefits to domestic agricultural and livestock farms and rapidly spreading Korea’s advanced digital model throughout Asia.”
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