Waleed Arshad, A serial entrepreneur has been a passionate part of the AgTech community in Pakistan. He uplifted the community in rural areas of Punjab by giving them knowledge to technological experiments to enhance produce yield and quality. He started his first AgTech project back in 2015 when he planted flowers to grow, he then moved on to different kind of vegetables, cash crops and so on. He scaled his project from 1 acre to 1000 acre of land. It was in 2020 when he found his true calling “Vertical Farming”. He built his first Hydroponic Greenhouse and started growing high quality of vegetables to be exported.
In early 2022, he came up with the idea of building a community around vertical greenhouses in order to uplift the community and give access to healthier, fresher, greener and organic produce. The target was to bring community together, cut down the supply chain and decrease carbon footprint and global warming in one go. Then, “VeGrow Farm” was born.
VeGrow team comprises the Founder Waleed Arshad, a young entrepreneur who has been working on building and scaling AgriTech projects for the past 7 years. Chief Marketing Officer Jasia Farooq, a young marketing professional working in Pakistan having experience across multiple industries including Telecom, Fin tech and Food Retail. Team VEGROW is looking to use this funding to go for their MVP and increase the pace of product development and build their supply chain. Waleed got selected for the Hero Training Program by Draper University earlier this year. Draper University was founded by the Legendary Venture Capitalist Tim Draper.
When asked about the size of the investment, founder Waleed Arshad said, “We can’t officially disclose the amount right now as we are heads down on building and we want to keep that our main focus. We will disclose it 6 months from now”.
VeGrow focuses on reducing the CO2 footprint that conventional farming poses on the environment. It is a technique of growing crops in vertical direction using as little Water as 5% of what conventional farming consumes. Using advanced technology the yield can be increased, disease can be controlled and quality of crops can be improved immensely to produce fresher, greener and healthier produce for everyone.For every downtown to have a place where you can get fresh, nutritious organic produce without having to deal with the hassle of sourcing, fluctuating rates from growing inflation, unreliable quality and changes from global warming.
To contribute towards decreasing the organic produce carbon footprint by shortening the supply chains. They build and operate vertical farming units in urban settings that provide fresh and healthy green produce to local residents while utilising significantly smaller amounts of natural resources to produce higher yields. The average American spends around $150-$300/month on groceries and yet, you are not getting the most out of your produce.
“Global Warming is getting worse day by day. If we don’t take a step today we will be very sorry in 2050. After the recent floods in Pakistan, I feel like it’s now or never for us.” Said Waleed, Founder of VeGrow.
