Australian start-up Airseed Technologies has been announced as Asia Pacific’s winner of Bupa’s inaugural international eco-Disruptive program.
Airseed Technologies will now go in the running to win more than $350,000 in funding to further develop its drone tree planting technology at the Bupa eco-Disruptive Global Final next month.
Airseed Technologies was one of six Australian start-ups that received funding from Bupa to develop pilot solutions that positively impact the environment and support sustainable development. It was selected as the Asia Pacific regional winner after receiving the highest number of votes from Bupa regional workforce.
As part of the competition, a team of Bupa’s people worked with Airseed Technologies to support the development of a customer platform that could assist them in planting 100 million trees a year using drones and artificial intelligence.
Bupa Asia Pacific CEO Hisham El-Ansary said, “We are extremely excited to have Airseed Technologies representing Bupa Asia Pacific in the Global Final next month."
“The innovative work they are doing in the agri-tech industry will potentially play an important role in restoring and protecting our environment. This is particularly important to us given the clear links between planet health and human health.
“Throughout the competition, our people have been energised by the amazing solutions our teams and start-ups have developed during the past six months. It’s shown the value of large corporates working with start-ups to accelerate development of sustainable solutions to some of the big challenges our planet is facing – we both learn from each other,” said Mr El-Ansary.
“We are especially thrilled that our 42 people across the six teams had such a unique experience working with start-ups. We hope they learnt about the impact they can have as both individuals and collectively on solutions that can make a real difference to the health of our communities and planet.”
Airseed Technologies will be up against a range of other start-ups that have worked with teams across Bupa’s UK, European and Latin American network.
Andrew Walker, CEO and Co-Founder of Airseed Technologies said the company’s participation in Bupa’s eco-Disruptive program and the learnings that followed have really accelerated its path to commercialisation.
“For the past 3 years AirSeed Technologies has been developing drone and biotechnology to tackle the climate crisis and biodiversity loss head on. Now is the time for AirSeed to catapult our solution forward and realise our mission of tackling reforestation and biodiversity loss at scale,” said Mr Walker.