Agtech startup hopes to ease burden of hiring migrant workers
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West Lafayette-based venture studio DIAL Ventures has launched its first startup. Croft says its Software-as-a-Service platform streamlines the H-2A visa process, which allows farmers to legally hire migrant workers for seasonal labor, such as harvesting fresh fruit and produce. The platform digitizes documents, automates workflow processes, and improves communication between the many stakeholders involved in the hiring process.
“What’s really important to understand is how many different groups are involved in this,” said DIAL Ventures Executive Director Allan Gray, in an interview with Inside INdiana Business. “You’ve got the farmer, you’ve got the worker, you’ve got the visa processor, you’ve got the government agencies, you’ve got the folks that are doing the recruiting of the workers in the foreign countries. There’s just this cadre of people involved in the process. And the communication amongst them is really challenging.”
LISTEN: Gray further explains to Inside INdiana Business reporter Wes Mills the difficulties of hiring migrant workers and how Croft will address some of the issues.
Gray says the H-2A Program is vital, but it is also expensive and cumbersome for farmers and growers. He says the paperwork is confusing and time-consuming, but it is something agricultural producers must face if they want to get enough workers.
“I put in my paperwork to get migrant worker help. It takes 16 weeks maybe to hear back whether or not my application has been completed. And in the interim, I don’t know whether the employees have been accepted or not. Nor do I know for sure how long it’s going to be before they get here,” explained Gray. “Trying to get all of that communication streamlined has been a really major part of what Croft brings.”
Most of the fresh fruits and vegetables in supermarkets must be planted and harvested by hand. It is a job few people want.
“Nationwide, the use of the H-2A visa program has increased by 20% over the past five years, underscoring the domestic worker shortage,” said Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation.
Gray says as the team explored the challenges associated with H-2A, they also discovered how the issue is related to food safety as they talked to farmers in southern Georgia where there is an abundance of crops requiring manual labor.
“One of the farmers spoke to us and said, ‘you want to fix the food safety problem? Get my workers here on time so that I can get [these] fresh market fruits and vegetables out of the field where it needs to be, on time. You fix that problem, and it’s already going to start to address food safety.”
DIAL Ventures was launched at Purdue University in partnership with venture builder High Alpha Innovation just 18 months ago. It focuses on the agri-food sectors and seeks to find innovative ways to digitize those industries.
Croft is led by Chief Executive Officer Scott Prince, an entrepreneur who most recently served as CEO of Indianapolis-based CarrierHQ, a business-to-business software platform for the trucking industry.
“At Croft, we have empathy for the farming industry, and the problems within are felt far beyond just farmers and workers,” said Prince.
Gray says DIAL Ventures is now in its second, six-month-long cohort. The fellows will pitch three new ideas in November to an advisory council who will then advise DIAL on which startup to invest in a pre-seed investment round.