Koubachi AG, the Zurich-based pioneer in the field of smart gardening, has been bought by the Husqvarna Group for an undisclosed figure. Koubachi’s team, including its founder Dr Philipp Bolliger, will join Husqvarna’s Gardena Division, and its Zurich office will be continued as an innovation and development site for Gardena.
The acquisition brings extensive experience of the Internet of Things and home automation technology in gardening and plant care to the Gardena Division. The acquisition is intended to increase and accelerate the value of Gardena’s own smart garden concept to be launched in 2016, which will connect automatic watering and robotic lawn mowing, managed by a smart phone app.
Koubachi’s product portfolio consists mainly of a cloud-based plant care system that includes sensors and mobile apps along with an extensive plant library and unique algorithms to improve plant care. The application is based on plant models developed by biologists at ETH Zurich. The system takes into account the plant species, the season, geographic location and the water cycle. After a simple calibration, Koubachi notifies its users when it’s time to water, mist or fertilise the plants.
Koubachi is a spin-off of ETH Zurich and is supported by the CTI, ETH Transfer and the National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) MICS. In November 2010 it was granted the CTI Startup Label.
Please login or sign up to comment.
Commenting guidelines