WEBIT Founders Games
WEBIT Founders Games
May 23, 2024
„If the bee disappears from the surface of the Earth, man would have no more than four years to live“ – Albert Einstein.
Late last night in New York, Webit Investment Network (BSE: WIN) announced the signing of a SAFE agreement to acquire shares in the U.S.-based company with an R&D center in Israel - BeeHero. This investment was possible due to Webit's right of first refusal to invest in all companies that have been finalists in the Founders' Games, such as BeeHero, which was officially announced at the Grand Ceremony in Davos during the Economic Forum in January 2024.
With this latest investment, the portfolio of WIN has grown to six companies in less than two years since the highly successful and over 2.4 times oversubscribed initial offering of the Webit Investment Network on the BEAM market of the Bulgarian Stock Exchange in June 2022. The remaining companies in the portfolio include:
BeeHero (Israel/USA) provides a SaaS service to ensure global food security by saving bees, as 75% of food crops rely on bee pollination.
The company was founded in 2017 and has seen revenue growth of over 270% each year for the past three years. In 2023, its revenues surpassed $44 million ARR. With headquarters in California and R&D in Tel Aviv, the company has 60 employees and has attracted a total of $64 million in funding to date from some of the most influential investors in the agriculture and food sectors. These include the agricultural and food investment fund of the so-called world's safest bank with over $1.5 trillion in assets - Rabobank, General Mills, Convent Capital, Cibus Capital of ADM Capital (in which BlackRock holds over 8% based on public information), Upwest Labs, Plug and Play, and many others. BeeHero also receives grants from the Israel Innovation Authority, EU Horizon 2020, the Bilateral Israel-America Research and Development Foundation (BIRD), and others.
After the agreement was signed late yesterday in the USA by Dr. Plamen Russev, in his capacity as manager of Webit Management and executive member of the Board of Webit Investment Network AD, WIN investors join the ranks of investors along with the previously mentioned world leaders and renowned investors in BeeHero. The agreement was signed after the WIN board of directors, consisting of Webit Management represented by Dr. Plamen Russev, Ivaylo Slavov, Petar Neychev, and Georgi Hristov, authorized Webit Management to make a $500,000 investment in the company, and after BeeHero successfully passed the WIN Investors Council vote.
More Information about BeeHero:
BeeHero provides farmers with a solution to maximize pollination by offering unprecedented transparency into bee activity. Pollination of most crops depends on bees, which are suffering from high mortality rates. BeeHero addresses this challenge by installing sensors in hives and fields that collect audio and biological data, leveraging AI and ML analysis to provide crucial information for beekeepers and farmers, improving yields and enhancing bee health. This enables farmers to monitor the effectiveness of their fields' pollination. For beekeepers, BeeHero offers insights into the state of their hives, helping maintain strong colonies. BeeHero manages over 200,000 hives and is the world's largest provider of precision pollination.
Problem Solving:
Global agriculture is becoming increasingly pollinator-dependent at a time when bees are suffering from high mortality rates, weakening health, and decreasing productivity. There is a growing pollination deficit around the world, resulting in suboptimal yields and increased prices for pollination services. Before BeeHero, there was no method available for monitoring bee pollination activity nor data for growers to base their pollination management decisions. Pollination is now the primary limiting factor in increasing the yield of many crops at a time when demand is higher than ever. BeeHero successfully demonstrates that precision pollination can play a major role in ensuring sustainable global food security by replacing the current ad-hoc approach with a data-driven solution.
Business Model:
BeeHero's main revenue stream is Precision Pollination as a Service (PPaaS), which is a subscription-based model for growers. In this model, BeeHero deploys proprietary sensors into orchards and fields to collect data on bee activity, weather conditions, and other factors that impact pollination. This data is then analyzed using machine learning algorithms to provide actionable insights to growers, including recommendations for optimal crop management practices, crop yield predictions, and insights into the overall health of the ecosystem. This model allows growers to optimize crop yields, improve crop quality, and reduce the risk of crop loss due to inadequate pollination. Growers pay a service fee based on two metrics - the number of acres to pollinate and the preferred number of bees.
Achievements:
In less than 5 years, BeeHero has become the world’s largest precision pollination provider, managing over 200,000 hives on 5 continents. Starting with almond pollination in the U.S., in 2023 BeeHero expanded into other crops such as blueberries, cranberries, and apples, and entered the Australian almond market. In addition to in-hive sensors, BeeHero now offers an in-field sensor system, which is most valuable for seed and specialty crops. In the upcoming years, BeeHero hopes to introduce additional business applications: various premium solutions for beekeepers such as insurance and working capital, and bee-pollinated commodities price risk hedging solutions based on BeeHero’s unprecedented scope of data, comprised of 10 million signals recorded daily.
Among BeeHero's awards are CNBC's top 50 global disruptors for 2023, top 13 most innovative Israeli startups for 2022, top 3 fastest-growing Israeli companies by GLOBES, New York Times' Good Tech Awards for 2022 for technology that creates a better world, and many others. Global Cleantech Group ranks BeeHero among the top 100 most influential companies in the impact technology sector.
About Webit Investment Network AD (BSE: WIN):
Webit Investment Network - WIN (www.webit.network) is a publicly listed company that democratizes access to investments in rapidly growing companies, offering profit opportunities comparable to those of major venture capital funds. This is made possible through the Right of First Refusal that WIN holds from Webit for every company that reaches finalist status in the world's leading early-growth program and competition - the Founders Games (www.FoundersGames.org).
For the first time, retail investors have the opportunity to invest in post-seed / Series A and B rounds (which carry significantly lower risk than initial angel investment / seed rounds) of some of the fastest-growing companies in the world. Until now, this opportunity was reserved only for the most established venture capital firms, which either took risks by investing in early stages or led multi-million dollar investment rounds. For the first time in history, retail investors gain the right and opportunity to acquire equity in such attractive and rapidly growing companies, equal the number of shares they own (even as little as one) in WIN.
For more information: https://www.webit.network/en/