e-kakashi

2025.07.17

Greein Inc. Awarded for "TSUBASA2025," an Open Innovation Program Co-organized by JICA and IDB Lab

～Accelerating the Development of Smart Agriculture Business in Brazil Towards a Leap Forward～

Greein Inc. (Head Office: Minato-ku, Tokyo; Representative Director CEO: Takashi Togami; a leading provider of AI-powered agricultural solutions including "e-kakashi" both in Japan and overseas; hereinafter “Greein”) has been awarded for the Business Course of "TSUBASA2025," an open innovation program co-organized by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and IDB Lab, the innovation laboratory of the Inter-American Development Bank Group. This program is widely recognized as a gateway for Japanese startups aiming for business expansion in Latin America and the Caribbean. This award marks a significant milestone for Greein in our journey to fully develop our business in the region, ensuring our success there.

< Background of the Proposal and Project Overview>
Brazil, a leading agricultural nation globally, faces pressing challenges such as increased droughts and floods due to climate change, soil degradation from excessive use of pesticides and fertilizers, and a lack of transparency in the supply chain. In response to these issues, the adoption of smart agriculture is strongly required to balance productivity with sustainability.

AI-powered agricultural solution "e-kakashi" has achieved proven results through feasibility studies conducted from fiscal year 2020 to 2023 in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, as part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications' ICT Package Project. In these studies, by utilizing IoT sensing and AI technology, algorithms were developed to predict rice blast disease and soybean rust. This resulted in the optimization of pesticide application frequency, leading to increased revenue of USD 368/ha for rice cultivation and USD 60/ha for soybean cultivation in the experimental fields.

Based on these achievements, this business proposal aims to introduce and disseminate an innovative smart agriculture technology to support agriculture development. This technology combines conventional IoT sensing and AI with newly developed satellite image analysis, targeting soybeans, corn, and rice in Rio Grande do Sul as a pilot state. The introduction of this smart agriculture technology is envisioned to realize sustainable productivity improvement by enabling optimal timing for harvesting, pest and disease prediction, and precise irrigation, fertilization, and pesticide application, thereby securing profitability while reducing environmental negative impact. Furthermore, by facilitating the digitalization of production records, the transparency of the entire supply chain will be enhanced, significantly strengthening traceability. As for the monetization model, we plan to verify a multifaceted revenue generation approach, including the sale of IoT devices, SaaS-based subscriptions, and the sale of traceability and other data.

Additionally, Greein Inc.'s proposed project, the "Pilot Project for Enhancing the Resilience of the Soybean and Corn Supply Chain in Brazil," has been selected for "the Global South Future-oriented Co-creation Project (Survey on the Promotion of Overseas Development of Infrastructure by Japanese Companies)" implemented by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan (METI). In this project, we will examine the technical effectiveness and business viability of a business model for cultivation and quality control using IoT sensing and satellite image analysis technologies to improve sustainable soybean and corn productivity and establish traceability throughout the supply chain in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. The implementation period for this project is scheduled to begin in June 2025 and last for 9 months until the end of February 2026. Greein aims to utilize the outputs and outcomes of this project to accelerate the profitability of smart agriculture support business in Brazil.

< About TSUBASA2025>
TSUBASA (Transformational Start Ups' Business Acceleration for the SDGs Agenda) (https://tsubasa-jica.com/) is an open innovation program co-organized by JICA and IDB Lab, designed to accelerate Japanese startups' business solutions for SDGs challenges in Latin America and the Caribbean. Participants receive mentoring from experts, introductions to local networks, travel and interpretation support, etc. For companies awarded for the "Business Course," like Greein, additional support may be analyzed by IDB Lab beyond the acceleration program of TSUBASA2025.

PRESS RELEASE (in Japanese) ＜https://tsubasa-jica.com/news/820/＞

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